An interview with Shobha Ponnappa, founder and CEO of Avigna Technologies, Chennai.

Can you tell us something about your background and how you became an entrepreneur?

I have been in the advertising field for 20 years, worked in three multinational ad agencies and handled the bulk of India's corporate accounts. Around seven years ago I reached a stalemate wherein the heydays of the advertising industry had passed on. I came to know about animation and slowly realized that the computer can become a media other than being just used for accounting purposes. My interest in the field coincided with the emergence of the field, and I had the right qualifications at the right time when the market was just emerging. I realised that being a very new field many of the companies did not include e- commerce or multimedia expenses in their budget. So we had to go sit with the vice-presidents and explain the whole process to them, the costs of the projects and the procedure, and we found out that we were losing a lot of time, effort and money. I am a first generation entrepreneur, overdraft and massive borrowing was not an option. So we started templating and archiving all the creatives we had designed and it helped a lot because for the next project the basics were readily available. Today this has very good spin-offs, as we take only one- sixteenth the time the market takes.

So what actually started out as a way to manage cash flow problems and to avoid monetary mishaps has proved to be tremendously useful.

Can you dwell on some of the problems you faced as a small start up company?

At that time the Indian market was in a nascent stage and we had to capture the American market to survive. Again, being a small concern we could not really afford to set up offices in various foreign countries. So we put up our website not as a mere information portal but as if our branch office was available on the web, where transactions could be conducted. As we could not afford to go over and meet our clients overseas so we exploited the web to the maximum benefit and we have thoroughly mastered it. Today, if a client comes to us wanting to set a web based module, then we can help him right from the validation of his business strategy, the creatives, to the monitoring, tracking and maintenance of his website.

How did you mobilise the skilled manpower necessary to make your company a success?

We found that people with the right and appropriate skill sets were in very disparate industries, i.e. the creative guys could not even begin to understand the technology and vice-versa. So we decided that each and every employee of Avigna will be a hybrid version of the company and possess a little of all the required skill sets. Each and every employee is a microcosm or macrocosm of the company. When we accomplished this, we managed to succeed in the market because our competition was just trying to make these professionals understand and work with each other that was proving to be tedious.

There are so many emerging management theories. Do you recommend that first time entrepreneurs should adopt any of them for effective management?

If you look at the industry every now and then some theory or philosophy comes up, like Kaizen, for example. It might work for some people and not work for others. People forget that ideas are specific to time and space. There is no need to project an exaggerated picture of the company to the world. When you think of your problems and face them squarely, you begin to start finding solutions, which will work in that situation.

Competition in any field is good as it enhances the quality of services. I feel that if my competitors are going to implement the stock ideas, which are already in circulation, then I can go ahead and think beyond these. I will think of newer ways to do things and newer ideas than yesterday.

What should people who want to become entrepreneurs learn before setting up shop?

The less you know the better! If someone told you about what a nightmare cash flow, manpower management and setting up of infrastructure are, then nobody would become an entrepreneur.

When you are a small company with strict cash flow regimes you cannot do what an ordinary company would do, you will have to adopt guerilla tactics and act very differently. You have to be resourceful and think of new ways to exploit the resources available at hand. From my experience I can tell you that there are many problems which can be solved by thinking creatively and utilising your resources to the maximum.

In this business you are not being mentally strong for someone else but only for yourself. If you are driven by your own goals and principles then that would provide you with enough strength. I keep in mind today's realities and the goals to be achieved within that scope, and not make grandeur plans for the future.

How is India poised for the future?

Lots of activity is happening in the Indian market right now. In the beginning people said multimedia is the in thing and everybody got into it but in a very unorganized manner. Then the dotcom wave started, and the venture capitalists started running after dotcoms and vice-versa. Everybody suddenly had this fantastic idea and wanted to drop their jobs and start their own portals. Fortunately, with the NASDAQ rumbling, a shakeout has happened and people have become wary of the dotcoms mooted by fly-by-night operators. Now the industry has matured a little and only business houses with stamina are surviving and getting funded and venture capital funding is becoming very choosy. The old economy, which was slow to start with are coming back, slowly venturing into the field of Internet. To start with they are setting up departments to first understand the technology before venturing into it and then they have started allocating budgets. That is healthy. For Avigna it is a good thing because we have handled them and know their requirements. If they are ready for the web then we are ready to put them on the web.

When you started out, did you have any doubts regarding your success?

I did not doubt myself even for a minute. Apprehensions and anxiety will come only if you try and predict the outcome. Why should you have a negative state of mind? Is every business going down the drain? For every business that fails there is new one which succeeds. There is always a fifty-fifty chance for success and failure. Negativity is surely not the answer.

MALINI SURYANARAYANAN