LESSONS FROM A SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR... Kiran Gopinath

An Entrepreneur Ought to be Mobile and Fluid, and be Able to Take Quick & Decisive Calls  A formal education is not a prerequisite to be a successful entrepreneur. But you must be daring and innovative Entrepreneurs have often held a rather base opinion of college education. From Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to Paul Allen and Larry Ellison, the list of the world’s richest entrepreneurs and innovators is littered with the names of those who couldn’t be bothered to get a formal degree. Kiran Gopinath certainly subscribes to that credo. According to the 41-year-old founder and CEO of Ozone Media, one of India’s leading digital advertising networks, the lack of formal education should never be a barrier to professional success. “By the end of my third year of engineering in Nagpur, I pretty much knew I was never going to be an engineer. Therefore, it didn’t make sense continuing my studies,” he says, with a degree of satisfaction. Gopinath’s current venture — Ozone Media — is often tapped as one of the leading operators in the burgeoning space of digital advertising in India. In 2008, the now seven-yearold venture raised $4 million in its first (and sole) round of institutional funding from venture capital firm IDG Ventures, at a time the global economy was going into a meltdown. “We are lucky to have a fantastic set of investors who have backed us in spite of the financial crisis. It hasn’t been easy, but we have not only managed to stay afloat, when not a lot of other ventures could, but grew as well,” Gopinath said. While Ozone Media is the entrepreneurial venture he is best known for, Gopinath’s journey goes back even further. “Most of the companies that I have worked with since my engineering days were pretty much like startups, whether in the telecom sector, outdoor agencies or in the Internet space,” he said. Introduced to the world of Internet while working at DBS Internet, a venture that sold web-based solutions, Gopinath soon branched out to form his first entrepreneurial venture — an Internet advertising startup called Webshastra — in 1999. “I got together with my co-founders at Webshastra and launched the company because the Internet at that time was such an exciting space to be in,” Gopinath said. The year 1999, however, was also when the infamous dotcom bubble burst, with the Nasdaq composite crashing spectacularly, wiping a number of tech ventures, entrepreneurs and investors off the map. Barely days before the crash, Gopinath and his Webshastra cofounders managed to raise $1 million from New York-based private equity major Warburg Pincus. The honeymoon, however, didn’t last long. “It was surreal. We raised funding from one of the top global PE firms, and then the market crashed. It was a scenario that was repeated when we raised funding for Ozone Media a few years down the line,” Gopinath said. The light at the end of the tunnel was barely a sliver, and hard decisions had to be made. Webshastra, which at one point had 43 employees and offices in Delhi and Mumbai, had to scale down staff to seven after a year. Webshastra was acquired by US-based search engine marketing agency Position2 in 2006, and Gopinath kicked off his new venture, Ozone Media, which now operates in the US, Canada and South-East Asia, and counts Mercedes and Citibank among its clients. “It’s been an     exciting journey so far. Ozone Media has been profitable after its first year itself, but it is a work in progress, even as customer demand and the industry continue to evolve at a quicker pace,” he said. Last year, Ozone Media rolled out its flagship product Re-Target, a platform that can assist e-commerce companies acquire customers by assembling banners in real time and serving them in a more focused manner to the audience. “You have to look for opportunities, and innovation plays a big role in creating opportunities. An entrepreneur must be mobile, fluid, and take quick and decisive calls. That is the essence of entrepreneurship,” he said.     (As told to Biswarup Gooptu) Kiran Gopinath CURRENT DESIGNATION CEO, Ozone Media COMPANIES FOUNDED Webshastra in 1999; Ozone Media in 2008 ONE THING I’D DO DIFFERENTLY Invest in technology and build products earlier than when I finally started to THE MOST EXCITING SPACE TO BE IN The Internet space