Only distinctive strategies will help startups succeed against MNCs: Naveen Tewari, InMobi founder

Startups can never fight multi-national companies in their fields with the exiting market strategies and should thus keep looking at newer ways to crack those markets, said Naveen Tewari, founder of InMobi at a session on founder's mentality to building great products at Nasscom.

"We are fighting some very very big guys out there ... You need to have a different strategy," he said.

Jyoti Bansal, founder of AppDynamics, who sold his company to Cisco for a whooping USD 3.7 billion last year also said that entrepreneurship was a difficult terrain and a person should not opt for entrepreneurship for the sake of it.

He said that while individuals should follow their dreams and pursue entrepreneurship, they needn't drop out of schools to do so.

"A lot of kids get too excited about startups. They should do what they want to do but at the same time there is no rush. It is important to finish school," he said.

Bansal also said that while there can be exit strategies for the investors and even the founders eventually, a company should never be started keeping exits in mind.

"People should not build a company thinking about an exit but to have a great business. If you build a right business, the company will keep growing," he said.

Narrating the experience of his own company, Bansal said that AppDynamics was heading for an IPO when the CISCO offer came.

According to Bansal, they said no to the offer, twice, however CISCO came up with a third offer which was "too good from a stakeholder's perspective", which eventually resulted in the deal.

In order to support entrepreneurship, Bansal has now also launched an incubator like structure - BIG Labs.

BIG Labs runs as a startup studio which plans to solve difficult technology problems and build products that can grow into business ventures. Bansal who made USD 520 million from the sale of AppDynamics has invested USD 50 million of his own money into BIG Labs.