Startup mgmt consulting strikes roots in Pune

The boom in information technology and other new economy businesses has kindled the fire of entrepreneurship among many a young techies.

After proving their mettle in Silicon Valley, they are heading home with incredible experience and a sharpened sense of entrepreneurship. But they get jittery at the very thought of going through the maze formalities and clearances for setting up their office.

A Pune-based management and financial consulting firm specialises in handling all the nitty-gritty that overwhelm the start ups and even help client's business plan, register his business and arranges capital.

ITlogy CEO Vinit Deo told Business Standard that Pune is home to hundreds of startups. These entrepreneurs, though very capable and having sound business idea, don't have the wherewithal of running an office.

"We offer to run their office and shoulder the routine things such as administration, payroll or accounting. Once the business settles they can have their own team which can take over from us."

Prajakta Ambekar, chairperson, ITlogy, who is also a CA, said: "In practice, we offer an array of services in the project finance domain. We thought we could easily extend the service to the start up units and help them settle over a year or so, the driving force behind choosing this area of specialisation was a keen desire to see entrepreneurial talent convert into reality."

Ambekar said the company offered all allied services like incorporation of companies, securing various registrations and setting up finance systems.

The company has so far signed up six start ups for offering its services. "We have a team of experts from banking, corporate finance, legal and taxation and of course information technology," explained Deo, adding that his company goes beyond the known profile of a BPO operation and extends many more value added services with finance as the central idea.

Thus Financial Process Outsourcing(FPO) is the right nomenclature to their business. The core service areas of ITLogy remain "� Project Finance (both debt and equity), Management Consulting and Financial Outsourcing.

Offering a simple comparison, Deo said his company follows the Build-Operate-Transfer model for its clients.

"We set up a company on a turn key basis, raise the finance in the form of debt, equity or venture capital, run its financial operations and once the processes mature, we hand them over to the internal managers. Actually, we don't want to restrict our activities to handholding of the entrepreneurs in the formation stage. We will do it on a completely outsourced basis forever, leaving the owners entirely free for business development and delivery.

Deo said ITLogy will work on collaboration model by creation of Business Partners in the emerging IT hubs of India.

The partners would be professionals like Chartered Accountants, Cost Accountants, Company Secretaries, Management and Financial Consultants etc. Fully in saddles as far as new enterprises being set up in Pune, ITlogy is looking beyond.

Ambekar says plans are already firmed for having presence in Mumbai and Goa and India's Silicon City, Bangalore, is next on cards.