Who is Funding IRIS?

One of the founder of IRIS came down to our campus yesterday to sell his company to us for recruitment purpose and I must admit it was one of the best sale pitch I had seen by any company during the last two years (and I have seen many).

I knew of this company only because of their website (www.myiris.com) and to my surprise they claimed themselves to be the Bloomberg or Reuters of India!!! And to be frank he somewhat convinced me.

What made me interested was that he was frank….living to its information company image he was providing us with full info without those manipulative packaging. He went to the extent of telling that they were in deep crisis last year and also about how most of the IIM grads don’t last there for even one full year. He packaged it by saying “we are the favorite poaching ground for big companies”.

Few of his comments were really interesting. The best one was when he quoted Keynes …it was something like this… “If job have to be created….start digging holes and filling them….” And he remarked that most of us are doing the same in today’s world (he was referring to how we first waste effort creating barriers to info and then companies like theirs try to bring down those barriers and collect info). More on this comment in my next blog.

The second one was “I want to retire in 5 yrs….the joy of entrepreneurship is if you become really rich in a short time….and short time is around 5-10 yrs” I must say I cant help agreeing with him.

But the thing that made the whole effort interesting when he held back information about the venture capitalist who funded them out of the “deep crisis”
The info he disclosed:
1. One of the top ten companies of the country
2. One of the most aggressive company
3. Its not Infosys or Wipro
4. The group has 6 companies listed on the stock market

I think these clues were a give away…and when I asked him directly whether its Reliance he was caught off guard and refused to reply…don’t you think it’s a give away.

It has to be a group like Tata, Birla or Reliance to have six company listed on the stock exchange and also be among the top ten companies of the country. (Six listed companies – Reliance Industries ltd., Reliance Energy Ltd, Reliance Capital Ltd., Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd., IPCL and I think Reliance Telecom Ltd.) But the biggest clue was the word “aggressive”. Are there many company in the country that can be called aggressive – maybe Bharti apart from Reliance I can’t think of any other group which can be called aggressive. (If I have to place Tata’s and Birla on a scale with one end as Aggressive and other as Impotent…I would place them closer to the later than the former).

So what can be the intention of Ambanis behind funding a company like IRIS? He says the VC is interested only in the money....I cannot disagree more. Well another string for my research on Reliance!!!