CERRITOS, Oct 31: The Southern California Chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs on Saturday hosted TiECon 2001, its fourth annual gala gathering for leading entrepreneurs.
In the light of recent changes in the global market and evolving world events, specially after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the subject of TiECon 2001 “The Changing Economy: Opportunities and Challenges” was very prudent.
The gathering, just as in the past, matched the record attendance, including a big number of Pakistani professionals and entrepreneurs, despite the downturn in the economy and fears of travelling, drawing close to a 700 business professionals.
The speakers include luminaries such as Safi Qureshi, TiE Southern California President, who is also former CEO of computer maker AST Research Inc. and now heading a US $50 million incubator Irvine Ventures, Hassan Ahmed, President and Chief Executive of Sonus Networks, recognized as the number one network and telecommunication company on Forbes “Dynamic 100” list.
Among other distinguished speakers were Admiral William Owens, a former Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and current President and CEO of TELEDESIC, which is the first licensed satellite communications network providing worldwide access to computer networking, broadband Internet access and interactive multimedia, and Lars Nyberg, President and CEO of NCR Corporation, a worldwide leader in relationship management solutions.
All the speakers discussed vital issues such as challenges on information technology, how women entrepreneurs are breaking through barriers, basics of entrepreneurship and challenges in entrepreneurship and how successfully reinventing your business in the post-Sept 11 period. Besides, business opportunities outside the technology world, methods on smart investment moves and a soul-searching explanation of leadership by Deepak Chopra, a world renowned expert and author of countless bestsellers in the field of mind-body, in his usual impressive philosophical rendition.
In his opening remarks, Qureshi set the stage for the day long conference highlighting how each of the speakers were going to be sharing their personal experiences as well as advice on how businesses and entrepreneurs need to adjust to changing world events.
He reminded the audience that TiE had always fostered and cultivated entrepreneurship with everyone from the region and “that is it’s true lasting appeal”.
He talked about how TiE needed to adapt to the changes in a global economy. He mentioned how Indus business communities can help rebuild this country by continuing to create capital and foster entrepreneurship — a cornerstone of America.
Qureshi was followed by Nyberg, who in his keynote speech “Changing Our DNA” said the methodology of management solutions had been shifted to mainly data warehousing, store administration and self-servicing, which is supported by worldwide customers.
That, he said, was a great departure from past focuses on just high performance, Internet, e-commerce, payments and channel deliveries.
He said demand of management solution software was growing from $5.5 billion in 1995 to $8.5 billion in 2000, but at the same time margins were squeezing.
Another keynote speaker was Ahmed from Sonus who described the technological dynamics involved in data information and networking as well as business dimensions. He said these days networks could not be driven by mere MIS (Management Information System) but through sales, a strong retailing, reaching out customers, business partners, employees and most importantly its capability to drive along the transactions.
Ahmed said the data-based information system took a major leap after 1995 as before that there was no concept of e-commerce and not every company had its web site and that opened challenging opportunities for companies such as Sonus.
The other factors are choosing right a team, including selecting those board members, who had successfully built new projects in the past, besides setting up a separate technical advisory committee.
“Increasing productivity though will reduce margins but will yield incremental revenues,” he said.
At the end of the morning session, the conference was divided into various panels.
The panel on “Life Outside Technology: Business Opportunities & Perspectives” discussed the role of Indus entrepreneurs outside the technology-driven market. Many, including a large number of Pakistanis, started and run some of the largest companies in America. Several of these companies are household names such as Mckinesy & Co Consulting, Pharmacia, Pepsi Corp and United Airlines.
Interestingly, just as tech firms are promising potentials of billions, these non-tech businesses also promise huge results and, in fact, many have survived numerous upturns and downturns.
Mohammad Iqbal, President and CEO of IQ Investments based in Irvine, California, is another speaker of Pakistan-origin, who had made a great name in America’s food franchising business.
His company franchises and manages 110 Hardee’s restaurants throughout the country from Colorado to Ohio.
Iqbal talked about the future of franchising and how to successfully run it. He said the market of food franchising had reached its saturation point and it was very difficult to get in and at the same time it was difficult to get out. “When you make up an investment of $500,000-$1 million it is hard to get out of it as well,” he said, adding, that is why 80 per cent of the business is in the controls of old giants.
He said for new entrant it was better to buy a running entity than to build one, choose a good operating partner but before buying always check the veracity of financial data of a seller.
Mahesh “Mike” Amin, Vice Chairman of Asian American Hotels Owners Association (AAHoA) and Managing Partner in Amin Group, a leading hotel operator in USA, managing 17 hotels, was another speaker, describing that post Sept 11 period had become very tough for the hotel industry as the economy was already slowing at the time of attacks.
However, he said it was also the right time to buy hotels as selling prices were quite low.
Admiral Owen was among the last keynote speaker He talked about the challenges of entrepreneurship in the post-Sept 11 attacks and said one of the causes of the attack was not spending enough by Pentagon in information technology. He said cable networks and bandwidth would not be as effective as satellite networks in future.