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so the board Excellence workshops that uh we are facilitating are very exciting and very powerful one of the themes that we have taken up is about managing an IPO what happens to the role of a director on the board um in from the pre-ipo stage to the post IPO stage and I think that's something that uh not only the promoters need to understand but also every aspiring board member with the onset of startups there are huge opportunities in the marketplace for experienced professionals from the business world to take on uh board responsibilities and often these responsibilities are located within startups and if someone were to become a board member or a board advisor on a startup uh he or she needs to be prepared for an environment which is not necessarily very orderly first of all in the pre-ipo stage an organization is in its state of infancy um where multiple people within the organization as also the promoter uh promoters themselves are very hands on everybody does multi hatting multitasking and everybody pretty much knows about everything else uh a lot of decisions take U you know are taken verbally uh a lot of execution takes place and people learn uh to navigate the business by making lots of mistakes learning from them and hopefully not repeating them again the role of a board member or a board advisor is to guide the promoters and also to coach and Mentor the other founder m members or senior members of the team on how to run this organization as to what sort of Mis to put into place um in what way to interact with with the employees internally as well as with the external World um it's usually a very chaotic environment and the board member needs to understand that um the there is very little pressure at that point in time to report anything externally because it's it's very uh it's an internal internally focused organization largely except for the business that they do um the funding is by Angel Investors or by uh a few individuals uh and that's who uh you know uh those are the sort of people who need to be kept informed of how the business is progressing and in terms of the strategy but over a period of time the role of the board members is to gradually professionalize this organization because this organization doesn't necessarily have any brand it it's not being traded in the marketplace so very few people know about it hardly any research analysts are keeping track of the progress of this particular organization and uh most of the banks would not necessarily entertain uh the pre-ipo organization to give um you know capital outlays or operational capital and it's very important to understand this aspect having said that once the organization decides to go in for an IPO which is usually anywhere around 5 to 7 years after in Inception of the organization then the road map to the IPO can take about 3 to 4 years but it does require a fair bit of diligent work U whereas the pre-ipo organization requires very almost no reporting and and requires conformance to regulatory standards at the very bare minimum the post IPO organization is very very different I think one needs to understand that the transition is extremely complex and needs to be recognized upfront first of all U the the post IPO organization uh means that you actually become a public limited company and you're going to probably the organization is going to have several hundred several thousands several lack shareholders and they in many in you know in the real term of the word become owners of the organization the promoters are required to dilute their holding by a minimum of at least 25% if not more this also means that there is going to be a loss of control and the promoters need to understand that the third part is that the board of directors now has a statutory um uh role Ro to play they have to act in a very independent manner in a fair manner taking into account the principal interests of the shareholders that all the shareholders all the stakeholders need to be dealt with uh in ance with regulatory environments and with a sense of fairness and no amount of conflict of interest or any other biases should come into their decision- making be they related to investments in the organization or in terms of communication with the external world the post IPO organization is under the watchful eyes of researchers who will analyze the business and who will always look at what you promised and what you are delivering and if there's a gap between promise and delivery um uh they will call it out and it will have a reputational impact on the organization apart from that a lot of media coverage is bound to happen for an organization and this can be both positive as well as negative positive if your organization is doing well and doing the right things and negative if you um if the performance is not good or if there's some fraud or something which is unethical that's happened in the organization so one has to be uh extremely clear about it a post um IPO organization requires a management team that is competent and has capability um and who are going to be remaining with the organization for a long period of time it's these aspects are extremely important so uh you'll need to have legal secretarial uh you know people who are in internal audit uh you'll have PR and communication investor relations that is the level of talent that one will need to invest in and in terms of preparing for an organization uh a lot of changes will have to be made over the period of 3 to 4 years that means you'll have to begin to strengthen your team you'll begin to establish relationships with Bankers with investors with PR firms with multiple advisers to guide you on the way to the IPO uh and it's very critical that the role of the directors will transform over this period from a relative state of informality and and advisory and mentorship to a role that will be very strictly compliant to the governance requirements of the country uh that will keep the uh you know conflicts of interest at Bay and where decisions are really going to be taken in the interest of the various stakeholders and shareholders so this promises to be a very very exciting subject as a part of the board Excellence Workshop that we are going to be conducting thank you