Several Businesses in India Bucking Slowdown

By Rahul Mehta

For all entrepreneurs who feel that getting venture capital funding in times of downturn might be tough, here's a sunny story. Suresh Narasimha, chief executive officer of TELiBrahma, received venture capital funding of $2 million two months ago.

Narasimha who started the company around 2004 is seeing the positive side of the slowdown. ‘‘As an entrepreneur, this is the time to focus on the actual value of your business and differentiate it with more propositions,'' he says. TELiBrahma is a Bangalore-based mobile solutions company, which currently has 50 employees. The company powers solutions like bluetooth-based mobile advertising, promotions, enterprise solutions and locationbased social networking and appears unaffected by the slowdown.

Experts believe that there are other sectors too that are likely to do well, no matter what the current situation of the economy is. ‘‘Sectors like healthcare, education, consumer goods and retail as well as media and entertainment are bound to do well. The slowdown is not that severe in India as yet,'' says Pradeep Kanakia, national head of markets at consultancy firm KPMG. As for the IT sector, the focus has shifted from pure services to products, and technology in education and healthcare. At IDG Ventures, for instance, six of the nine companies that received funding from them are product companies.

‘‘We believe there are certain sectors that are truly recessionproof, like security, medical sciences and technology in defence and remote monitoring, says Sudhir Sethi, managing general partner, IDG Ventures India.

In the slowdown, companies will invest less in new capital and would like to extend the life of existing capital assets.

Hence demand for remote management and predictive maintenance technologies is expected to grow. ‘‘A major construction company has used such a technology from ConnectM and has already seen a 15% cost saving,'' says Sethi.

Energy management too is seen to be an area that will gain in such times, since it is a major cost for most companies.

‘‘Gifting is an area that might see downtrading, but will not stop. Hence our investment in the online initiative Myntra,'' says Sethi.