Friday, April 04, 2008

Tamil Nadu: 101 Entrepreneurs

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) launched a coffee table book on the history of entrepreneurship in Tamil Nadu last week. The book had featured narratives on 101 Tamil Nadu entrepreneurs, and the list of entrepreneurs was selected by a CII taskforce.

My company was involved in interviewing and writing the stories on these 101 interesting men and women and then making the book.

No such list can be exhaustive. The people chosen were all first generation entrepreneurs.

As one can guess, most of them built their businesses in the 1990s, thanks to liberalisation and the opportunities created by this process.

However, a majority of them are not geared to take the next step by raising substantial funding through private equity or IPO, to become a pan-indian company, and then from there to become a global company. Excluding the listed companies mentioned, only one entrepreneur mentioned wanting to go IPO and he is in the healthcare sector. Another person indicated that he wouldn't even raise any form of equity/debt funding for growth and would depend entirely on internal accruals! His company creates software for managing securities and he has developed software for NSE!

The book, titled 'Star Trek' may not be available in the book shops. However, one can contact the CII Chennai office to find out if copies can be bought from them.

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