It’s finally cool to be an entrepreneur in India
Startup Weekend Delhi
Being an entrepreneur in India is finally becoming cool, say the founders and investors in the burgeoning startup tech scene in Delhi. That new caché is in contrast to decades of the mindset that young business people should strive to work for large branded conglomerates and avoid taking risks creating new ventures or joining early stage tech firms.
The sentiment was repeated throughout the weekend at a startup business competition called Startup Weekend Delhi, which featured 15 teams that spend 54 hours hashing out web and mobile startup ideas, culminating in back to back 5 -minute pitches before judges on Sunday night. Some of the winners of the pitch-fest included a cell phone incentive program around sanitation company Poop Rewards, a new type of gesture-based kiosk from Kinesis, and a mobile app to test glasses on a photo of faces called Spexy.
Long time venture investors in India at the event noted that up until recently budding young unmarried entrepreneurs in India sometimes found it hard to get married because founding a startup was seen as risky by their potential wife or husband’s parents. Big tech conglomerate brands have long been preferred a status symbol and expected from upwardly-mobile young techies.
But finally that mindset is starting to change — albeit slowly and in a small way — and shift to accept, and even admire, the potential path of the founder, entrepreneur and early startup employee. Part of that evolution has to do with the worldwide attention that tech entrepreneurs in the U.S. like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — which even had his story told via a Hollywood movie written by Aaron Sorkin — have gotten in recent years.
However, another reason is that there are starting to be success stories from India’s e-commerce and mobile sectors. On Monday (India time) we’ll be meeting with some of India’s tech “cool kids” that entrepreneurs are being inspired by, including Kunal Bahl, the CEO and co-founder of Snapdeal, a Groupon-style deals site in India, and Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Naukri, a jobs site in India like Monsters.com.
And yes, the Indian tech entrepreneurial ecosystem is still very nascent compared to Silicon Valley and still has “considerable friction” as one investor put it to me. Some investors lament the slow growth of the ecosystem, which they have been waiting to mature for years. Others say there is still a “lack of talent” in the sector because they say the mindset of developers has long been focused on outsourced tasks for U.S. firms and hasn’t been dealing with thinking critically and creatively to solve problems.
But despite the wait and the hurdles, many are expecting that the opportunities in the web and mobile markets in India to take off dramatically several years down the road. The Indian startups and services will at first resemble those in the U.S. — many Indian startups are currently U.S. web clones — and later on they’ll morph into a breed all of their own.
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Katie, Interesting article at the right time. When few of the start-ups are shutting down (www.taggle.com) within a year after getting $1million funding.
I would like to rephrase your headline as “It’s finally cool to be a TECH entrepreneur in India”. Cuz startups are not new in India (Some of the VCs sitting in silicon valley may differ from my view, but i can show many great startups from social to other industries). Tech Entrepreneurs in India in the last few years think that it is easy to clone an idea or start a so called Social media ventures, but they don’t understand that sustaining an idea based on the Indian scenario is quite difficult. Which is what the “Cool Tech Entrepreneurs” you are talking don’t get it.
Being a failed entrepreneur of 7 times before starting my 8th successful company, i feel that 25 out of 30 people who start a company in India fail. I put my life savings in all my 8 startups. But today the young entrepreneurs think that with a nice looking ppt and a same old e-commerce model they can get funding (Ofcourse some do). On top of that they think they can make it happen with their first startup.
Entrepreneurship to me is risking what you have and ready to fail and still create a profitable company by creating a great environment for all the people who believe in your idea. Also It is quite difficult for people of India to risk and lose their savings, cuz most of them are fearful about financial crisis, since most of us are from middle class families. As you mentioned they may not get a potential wife or husband. At pepper square (where i work) i see guys saying that they are not getting potential girls cuz the girls parents are looking for someone who is working in IBM, Infosys, Wipro, etc. I come across many 20 year olds dosen’t want to take risk and start a company instead they want to get a Cushy job.
Unlike Silicon Valley most of these young entrepreneurs live with their parents. 99% of them don’t get VC funding, so they have to look for social capital. And it is not that easy to get $50k kind of money from your friends and family.
I see many startups in Delhi but Bangalore surely is the Silicon Valley of India, hope you will come here and experience the startup action.
Come to TES 2011 on 15-16 dec and you will experience what i am saying.
@Muki, thanks good point!
Thanks for reading my comments Katie. Good day
Muki, apart from the points you raised, I would stress on the failure bit the most. Failure isn’t cherished in India. I get a sense of this the most when my mom is explaining what I did in the past to relatives, she goes around playing with words and jumps the word ‘failed’ and talks studies in between and then ends close at what I am doing today.
Fear of failure when beginning is one, failing and getting another opportunity to do what your heart beats for is another.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
I see a new Indian kid on the block. Check out this trial release he made http://www.kiwifruut.com. Good intentions : http://kiwifruut.tumblr.com/
I have been an entrepreneur for about 12 years and have seen my share of failure and finally my previous firm had a successful exit (was acquired by a large public firm). My first two were founded and based in the US however my third (previous)firm was founded in US but had very deep India roots since 90% of our workforce and delivery centers were in India. The creation and growth of my previous firm gave me a very unique perspective on not only building, sustaining and growing a firm in India from talent and skills development point of view but also dealing with rather different set of operational and financial challenges faced by entrepreneurs who are trying to build their venture in India. Here is my humble learning:
a) India still remains a very brand driven culture/society and hence (to Muki’s point), it is very hard for an early stage (read ..no name) firm to attract good talent given the social pressure on someone who joins a “no-name” firm. The consequences of not having a “big brand or known brand” employee could be as bizarre being looked down upon by potential marriage prospects Dad’s to being made fun of by friend/family. I have even seen loans or membership to Gym clubs being denied for some of my employees during the formative phase of our firm. Surprisingly, once we had run our PR campaign and ran our half-page recruitment ads into national papers for couple of weeks, the perception our firm changes dramatically (although fundamentally we were still the same firm with same revenues and profitability).
b) Lack of enforceable employment contracts also poses a big challenge to preserve and sustain knowledge and IP
c) A slew of bizarre regulations (ranging from Income tax guys, sales tax guys, human labor laws, local politicians goons, sanitation and so forth). Although, these are all quite solvable by having a good (read shrewd and informed) accountant at hand but for a newbie, these challenges could slow down business execution
d) It is impossible to have confidential HR operations since (perhaps a cultural issue) most of the Indian employees are very comfortable discussing their compensation and even comparing it openly with their peers and juniors. This creates tremendous issues in creating a “meritocratic” system and environment. We learned our lessons in year two of our ops and from year three we pre-empted this issues by stating and actually publicizing the notion of “no defined pay scale and a entirely one to one compensation structure”. Pl don’ try to implement bands or ranges since it would continually cause challenges
However, despite all these “minor” challenges, I believe India is a very fertile market for new and disruptive ideas and many entrepreneurs are building very good firms and my own next venture is also has India as a very attractive market
Nice read. For someone who was there at the event and is a first time entrepreneur even such a debate is inspiring. I agree with Muki that entrepreneurship in India isn’t a new phenomenon. The focus on India is obviously greater now as the domestic demand is high. It will be interesting to note over the years how many Indian tech start ups scale globally.