My ‘Mona Lisa’….

I like Art. I collect Art when I can afford it. I appreciate Art. I study Art. I dream of owning some great painters and masters.

Having said this, I never expected to find ‘the’ Mona Lisa of my life so suddenly and so fast, and that too in my own house.

This is what MY MONA LISA looks like:

So, are you intrigued about what this ‘photograph’ that I am calling MONA LISA is all about?

This is the story:

Who is in the picture?

It’s a group of 2win employees (from left to right – Satish, Gaurav, Kamal, Raj, Dinesh and Salil) who are a few core team members of our Companies. Some of these people have been at 2win for 10+ years. Salil was my first employee and joined contests2win.com in 1998, accepting a salary of Rs 5000/- a month (He is an MBA and denied a salary of Rs 15k with some MNC).

Some other people are missing from the snap. They couldn’t make it when I shot it.

Why is this picture MY Mona Lisa?

Yesterday, we announced that Games2win – a Company that I manage, was invested into by Nirvana Venture Advisors through a deal that acquired shares of my old VCs and some of the shares of key employees (some of them in the photo above). 

That deal proved that EMPLOYEES holding ESOPS (yes ESOPS) actually make money.

Since a decade, 2win has been issuing esop shares to its employees across its companies – Contests2win, Mobile2win, Media2win and Games2win.

Now, employees accept these esops in good faith. They ‘assume’ that something valuable is being given to them, without really knowing ‘what’. They don’t question what will come out of the esops, but for a long long time, I have had a feeling that employees just think of esops as complicated pieces of paper.

At our end, assiduously, 2win prints methodically converted ‘esop grants’ into REAL SHARE Certificates in bi-yearly cycles of October and April.

We do so in the hope that these shares will create some value for the employees, some day.

We always believe that ESOPS should NOT COST the employees anything, because no one knows their real worth! So we give them away for free (Rs 1 per share), without marking them at some ‘cocktail’ values. In fact, in the past few years we have paid expensive ‘perquisite taxes’ to the governement for giving away ‘valuable’ shares to employees for free, given the ridiculous tax systems of our Country that attempts to ‘tax’ value that has still not been created.

We live with all this pain and cost because we believe that ESOPS and their underlying shares HAVE value and CAN delight our employees.

Finally, this transaction of yesterday has created some interesting facts:

– All the employees whose shares were acquired yesterday, CONTINUE to hold shares in their respective Companies. They sold only a small portion.

– The moneys they have received are decent. I’m talking about double digit Rupee lacs for some of them.

– EX-EMPLOYEES (yeah, one of them who works for Zapak!!) also received money. This proves that if you did great work and then quit a Company, then your shares and their values will NOT get extinguished.

– The buyer – Nirvana Venture Advisors in this case, demonstrates massive Venture Capital character to go ahead and buy shares of employee shareholders that DO NOT HAVE the same rights as preferred and premium VC shares have (Conversions etc). This speaks a LOT about Nirvana Venture Advisors and also the faith they have in the Company and these people. Most importantly, it points to the new quality of Venture Capital available in the Country!

– To make this transaction happen and make employees a bit rich, Games2win has NOT been sold or acquired or listed! In the past, the 2 Companies I have sold – Mobile2win China and Mobile2win India, had employees (honestly only the CEO and COO) who made some money – but that was AFTER the Companies were bought by Disney and Norwest Venture Partners.

In this case, the Company, the employees and the Investors exist as is – only happier and more tightly knit.

So, I assume you now understand why this picture IS my MONA LISA.

But I also wish, that this becomes not just MY Mona Lisa but inspires MANY MANY other Mona Lisas to hang in all the Startup Companies and unlisted Businesses in India – whose deserving employee shareholders should receive surprise payouts from genuine investors and supporters of their Company and their efforts.

Only Mona Lisas like these will ignite massive entrepreneurship in India.

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