The Amazing Breed of Young Indian Entrepreneurs
Recently I attended StartUp Garage, just for a few hours, but I managed to interact with several young entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs.
This was not the first experience for me. I make it a point to connect with this breed, at various other startup events and mentoring opportunities, including Headstart’s StartUp Saturday, at the MentorEdge Rendezvous sessions, and TiE’s mentoring events, amongst others.
And almost always, I come back feeling very impressed. By the entrepreneurial energy in the first place. And sometimes, by the quality of business ventures that some of them are working on.
I think back to the many years back, when we graduated from engineering school. I do not remember a single classmate of mine, who went out, straight from college, to start a venture of his own. There were few who went and joined their family businesses. Which is an entirely different thing. But none that I remember, who started new ventures of their own, straight out of college.
Years later, many of my batchmates are today, running successful entrepreneurial ventures. But they all started after taking a few years experience, working in industry. Typically.
As against that, I am seeing just so many keen final year students (of engineering or management schools, typically) and students who have just passed out of college, who are all set to get into a business venture of theirs, I am amazed by it all!
That one has the dare at the early age, to chuck job offers, and venture out on one’s own.
To take on the challenges, not just of giving life to your idea, but also to take on other accompanying challenges of finance, team building, marketing, etc.
So irrespective of how good or viable these ideas are, that we have so many attempting to create their own businesses, it is truly impressive.
Coming the actual quality of the plans though, perhaps 1 out of 20, are good enough (by my assessment – and I could be wrong, of course!) to potentially become decent successes.
But that is not a bad ratio.
I was completely impressed for example, by this one entrepreneur, who had finished college few weeks back, and who demo-ed to me, a completely working and commercially viable, SaaS based video conferencing tool, with some excellent features. He may still have some challenges to get the UI improved, and of course, to figure out the pricing model and the marketing, but he has a full-fledged working prototype out there. Obviously made, even as he was a student in college.
Now that takes some doing.
And there are more like that.
I have this one other group of students, from another engineering college, who have set up an e-commerce venture, for selling text books. Again straight out of college. And a business model that I think, is extremely attractive, and can become very successful, if they can execute it right. They interact with me once in a while, and I am very bullish about this venture.
Indeed, these are excellent times, for India’s economy, and this level of confidence and dare, amongst the youth, can only help propel the growth rates. I am very happy about the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country now. And I am happy to have occasional run-ins with these smart youngsters, and also happy to share the occasional gray hair wisdom with them 
What does it take to run a successful digital business in India?
This was the topic given to me, by the organizers at the Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, I I T Mumbai. Originally meant to be a panel discussion (would have been a very interesting one, I bet), it was later converted to a talk by me.
Even as I was preparing my thoughts for this subject, I posted the question on my Facebook page to ask my friends, what they reckoned, does it take to succeed in a digital business in India. And I got responses that included the need for velocity, passion, doggedness, understanding local nuances and culture, etc.
Which were all right, in their own way.
But I guess all of those factors, and many more, are relevant for just about any business, and not particularly digital businesses. So focusing specifically on digital businesses, and for India in particular, I put some thoughts together.
It was important to appreciate key words here, viz.
Success – not about winning a business plan competition or getting angel funds or even VC funds. Success, for this context, was about generating a sizeable business, making money (as against burning money), creating a brand, perhaps an IPO, etc.
Digital – every business nowadays has some digital component. So we are not referring to those. We are also not referring to creating applications for deployment on the digital space. Since creating applications is a software business, whether for online space or otherwise. So digital in this context, was about close to pure-play digital businesses, typically online types like e-commerce, services on a digital platform, portals, and the like.
India – for me, meant that the operations are based here. But that is not to stop serving a global market.
With that context, and focusing more on the business side and less on the technology side, this is what I put together (note that bullets are cryptic, as there was talk that supported these; so, not sure if all of the points get across – no, don’t have the time right now, to elaborate the points!):
Would love to have your views on the subject. Please share in the comments below.
Inspiration
Sanjay Mehta
Attending a Bar Camp, Startup Saturday and the Entrepreneurship Summit, in the last 3 weeks, took me back to 1997-98 days when we were starting up for the first time, with Homeindia.com, along with few other first-generation dot com entrepreneurs in India.
I can see the same energy now, perhaps only magnified by the changes in the economy over these years, the emergence of India as a country to reckon with, the maturity of the ICT businesses, the far larger familiarity of the technologies for students climbing out of their campuses, and of course, the awareness now, about an ecosystem that can encourage entrepreneurship.
There is another change. Me. With 11 years of hands-on Internet experience, there is a larger “intuitive” feel on the industry, there is beyond the romanticism of the business, a better understanding of business realities, of markets, of revenues and results. As one young participant respectfully pointed out, there is the “gray hair” difference.
This has inspired me to start this new blog. To share my 2 cents worth, on new startups that I see coming up. Based only on information that is in the public domain (or shared by the company in public forums), and not based on any private information that entrepreneurs share with me. With an idea to give some new perspectives. Ultimately the business succeeds because of the entrepreneurs and they need to trust their gut. But “outside” views help sometime. And which is what I strive to provide here. With only one goal in mind: to enable the entrepreneur to SUCCEED!!
