Diksha Dutta's Blog

From panel discussions on accelerator programmes to inspiring stories of young entrepreneurs who learnt their route to happiness- TechSparks 2017 in Bangalore was an event that had all the flavours an entrepreneur looks for. For us at WunderNova, the real spark was to see how German and Indian startups are open to find synergies to work together. The year 2017 has had a series of good news to boost relationships between German and Indian startups. The idea of the two countries working togethe...

I am always keen to know what reading means to entrepreneurs, simply because they are my primary audience when it comes to writing. Over the last year, I have interviewed more than fifty entrepreneurs just for my upcoming book on Indian startups, not counting the other interviews I do for my columns. As I am in the last stage of completing my manuscript, I am even more curious to know why entrepreneurs actually read and how they perceive business books. I have managed to have an encounter wit...

Early this month, I visited Bangalore and my meeting with Margit Hellwig-Bötte, German Consul General, who is also a WunderNova Women Leaders’ Club (WLC) member, happened to be the highlight of my trip. It is not often that you get an opportunity to have a chat over coffee with a woman who has spent 28 years  involved in Diplomatic Services across countries. Over the 45 minutes that I got to spend with Margit, we touched upon various topics from Indo-German relations, women’s issues,  followe...

When I joined my first job in April 2009, it was a team of four members. For some reason or the other, all of them quit within a span of three months and I was the only one left handling an online news website as a single member. I managed it end-to-end from collecting news, posting articles to managing the backend of the website. I stuck to my job in that lean period and I am glad I did. Now when I look back, I think that phase made me realise the importance of actually getting the first tea...

‘Startups’ are a hot topic for media across the globe. With startups making headlines almost every day, it is important that they deal with media in an effective way. We spoke to Ankur Warikoo, Founder, nearbuy, an Indian e-commerce company about how the company leverages internal and external media. In a candid conversation with Diksha Dutta, Contributing Editor, WunderNova, he shared nearbuy’s storytelling approach, the mistakes done while talking to media and learnings in the process. Here...

(How to avoid co-founder disputes in a startup – Part 2)

“We restructured our Founders’ Agreement three times over a period of three years, and the third time, the restructuring was with the help of a lawyer,” said a founder whom I interviewed. This clearly shows that having a standard Founders’ Agreement is not enough to protect your business. It is more important to have an agreement tailored for you and your business in such a way that it covers in specific and not generic terms most aspec...

I thought of multiple headlines before writing this article. One of them was Marketing mistakes made by tech entrepreneurs. I was all set to write it under this headline until I spoke to Sumeet Mehta, Founder, Cardpe, a merchant aggregator for physical transactions which helps small businesses to accept card based payments. His company went operational in February this year. When I asked him about his marketing approach till now, he said, “Marketing is needed only for products that don’t sell...

What is one of the biggest challenges when you attend a global conference or an exhibition fair as the founder of a startup? It certainly is networking effectively and meeting the right people who can share knowledge with you.

How do you plan your schedule during a conference which has 450 startups, 3500 journalists and 200,000 participants? As an entrepreneur, you will be spoilt for choices if that conference is a place where you will find dozens of good ideas and it attracts company founder...

Before writing this article, I spoke with three lawyers who specialize in consulting startups. All of them had a common observation — the majority of co-founders that they meet do not sign legal agreements between them at the time of starting their venture. Co-founders either feel that they have been friends for long enough to not trust each-other or that their startup is still taking baby steps and is not ready for any kind of legal agreement. Pratik, an independent lawyer who works closely...

I never believed in online social networking. Until I discovered the best practices to do it. My first preference in building my social network was always through face-to-face meetings. I would interact over a phone call only if a meeting was not possible. I would exchange emails only if phone calls were not answered. I followed the rule of meeting a new person every day when I was hunting for stories on a daily basis as a full-time business reporter. Entrepreneurs definitely do not have the...