A presentation for Rotary Club of Madras North, touching upon the increasing relevance of media to business leaders of today

1. You and Media

2. Data point # 1
• Increasing relevance of media to business
leaders of today

3. Data point # 2
• A smart world out there, cutting across
generations and geographies, horizontals
and verticals, driven by technology, willing
to connect and listen, see and study, the
work of domain experts and entrepreneurs

4. Needed
• Business leaders to be authentic, credible,
interesting, engaging, topical, and fresh,
with their inputs.

7. Story - Shiva

8. Story begins
• Even while advising budding entrepreneurs to
focus on identifying the right mix of skill-set in
their co-founders, Shiva cautions them about
some of the common pitfalls, in this brief
interaction withYourStory.
• Read on the Q&A with S. Shivakumar, CEO,
iSource Solutions, in which he also narrates his
entrepreneurial journey, and talks about his
recent expansion in the US and India.

9. Q: First, your story, Shiva, as an
entrepreneur.
• I attribute my entrepreneurial adventure to
my father, a small-time grocery store
merchant, and my unfortunate (injury)
sports career. From childhood he involved
us in all his trading endeavours. My
attempt to become a professional
sportsperson and play basketball taught
me leadership traits and the never-say-die
attitude.

10. Story of growth
• Before iSource, I tried my hands with
several IT, dotcom, HR consultancy and
related businesses. iSource was born
during the early stages of the BPO boom
in India, in 2004. We have grown to 200plus people with 4 offices in India and 2
offices in the US.

11. Q: About the recent expansion in
the US, and India.
• We realised the importance of the US local
partner and worked diligently to win the trust of
potential partners. We partnered with a leading
healthcare accounting and advisory firm, and
incorporated a joint venture company in Florida
with local sales and support staff. It worked like
magic, and we bagged $1 million worth of
contracts in a short span of 2 months, and are
working on a $5 million goal before the end of
this year.

12. US, India
• We are looking to repeat this success in the
Midwest through similar partnership ventures
with established local partners in Chicago and
Missouri.
• In India, we have expanded our operations in
Thiruvananthapuram Technopark to attract the
talent pool in Kerala. Our Coimbatore and
Madurai branches are training a large pool of
talent which will be inducted into our workforce
soon.

13. Q: On the women workforce.
• Empowering women is the need of the
hour. We have been employing an
increasing number of women in our
offices. We provide free training (on the
US healthcare revenue cycle
management) at our branch offices
located in the Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

14. Q: Your advice to entrepreneurs.
• Budding entrepreneurs should focus on
identifying the right mix of skill-set in their cofounders.
• Marketing cannot be outsourced. Don’t try to
ignore this.
• Raising funds cannot be done simply by hiring
the so-called consultants and paying them.
Avoid hiring consultants to raise funds. Do the
right PR exercise to attract investors and make
money chase you, not the other way.

15. Telephonic interview

16. Comments
Ashvin Bhatt · Software
Engineer at Persistent Systems
• Overall nicely tied up. Heading of the
article does not support article.
Adhithya Vignesh · Technical
Consultant at Tamil economic conference
• Thanks for the motivation and
knowledgeable insights.

17. Shares
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FB – 82
Twitter – 23
LinkedIn – 14
Google Plus – 3

18. Goal
• Club is interested in bringing out the best
among its members, for the media at
large.
• YourStory will work closely with the Club
for achieving this goal.

19. To Do
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Discover your story
Narrate it
Get feedback
Refine the narrative
Go LIVE
Face comments, respond, GROW

20. Is there a MEDIA story?
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i – Less of the self. Keep the I small.
NEW
DIFFERENT
INSPIRING
AUTHENTIC
In short, iNDIA or INDiA

21. Thank You
D. Murali
Managing Editor, YourStory
+919444907996
murali@yourstory.in