What Indians think about Startups?
Our beautiful country, India is known for its diversity. We have several cultures, languages, states, religions. With diversity in everything, comes diverse perspectives and opinions.
Indians have got not just diverse but very interesting thinking about startups. After a lot of research, the thinking of Indians has been put into 4 types.
Do you also fall in one of those?
Let’s uncover it.
In the last 5 years, our country has seen an incredible rise in the number of Indian Startups. A number of them have become unicorns. Indian startups are luring investors worldwide due to their enormous potential.
On one hand, the whole world is betting on the entrepreneurial power of India, it is important to know what we Indians think about startups and entrepreneurs. A diverse country like India has different opinions and thoughts over the talk of the town, called entrepreneurship.
Based upon the thoughts of the people, I have segmented them into 4 categories -
- Entrepreneurship is cool, fancy, and will make you the richest person on the planet
The Students from schools and colleges fall in this category. Being from the generation that consumes the content of Facebook and Instagram as the major source of information, they have developed this mindset. A number of influencers and entrepreneurs have made entrepreneurship something about showing off your high profile life, private jets, exotic holidays, expensive cars etc.
The students of this age group are naive enough to believe this is what entrepreneurship is all about. They fall into this false trap of show-off and money and are aspiring to become entrepreneurs as it is the synonym of the luxurious lifestyle of them.
2. Entrepreneurship is too risky, it is not an option at all
This category is called the parents. Typical Indian parents have no idea at all about entrepreneurship, the opportunity Indians have, in this era of technology and digitalization. For them the Government job is still the best.
The rise of technology and entrepreneurship is changing so quickly that Indian parents are unable to adapt themselves towards the change. They are still derived from the traditional mindset of studies and stable jobs.
They are ready to invest millions in the studies, and will always say yes for any of the books or courses of your curriculum but will not give you even a hundred bucks to start something of your own.
In our country, even today, the kids have only two options to pursue, either Engineering or Medical. One of the biggest challenges in our country to produce great entrepreneurs and a lot of startups is their parents. The traditional ideology of parents has killed more entrepreneurs in the country than anything else.
3. Entrepreneurship is the Future
Most of the entrepreneurs of the country belong to this mindset. They believe in the talent of the country, they believe in their idea, their vision, and above everything, they believe in themselves.
They are the ones changing the face of the country. They are the ones representing our nation on the global level. These visionaries are not only solving the problem of the people with their ideas but also helping the country to grow by employing the millions of people of the country.
Today, our country has around 40 million unemployed people, according to business today. Only more startups and businesses can the situation.
Every year around 36.6 million (MHRD data of 2018–19) fresh graduates are coming out of the colleges.
What about their jobs?
If each one of them will only think of getting a secure job, then who will provide them jobs. Therefore constantly producing new entrepreneurs is the need of the hour for our country.
Imagine a scenario, in which, an individual employs 100 people throughout his lifetime via his or her startup.
Consider 0.1 million of such individuals, then total jobs created will be 100,000*100 = 10 million jobs. We have a population of more than a billion. Is it really too difficult to even 0.1 million from a billion?
It isn’t.
If more and more young people approach to become an employer instead of an employee then the whole scenario of the country will be changed within a few years.
4. No innovation, Indian startups are meaningless and failing -
This is what a lot of the top leaders think about the Indian entrepreneurial system.
When I was doing my research for this topic to know the Indian mindset, the only thing that I found was negativity all over the internet. A huge number of articles on various famous news platforms of leaders bashing the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem were found.
A single reason for such negativity is the lack of innovation in Indian startups. Though it is true to some extent that most of the Indian startups are copycat models of the silicon valley. But that doesn’t make them useless.
Ola for Uber, Flipkart for Amazon were the first of their kind in our country. Though they were copycats, we didn’t have such things. Today they are solving the problems of millions of us and employing a huge segment of the population.
It is true that we also want innovation but we also want employment and these copycat models are helping us to achieve that goal.
Imitation is also progress. Indian startups are also growing every year, making their mark on the international market. Several new ideas and innovations are also happening but it is slow as compared to developed countries. Because we are still at the back foot in terms of resources, funding, and our traditional education system.
Comparing our entrepreneurial ecosystem to Silicon Valley is not the right mark to judge our environment. Therefore instead of creating a negative environment around entrepreneurship in our country, we should encourage more people to take this path.
The most important thing in the present time is that we need more entrepreneurs. Period.
How do you see Startups? Tell me more about it and your perspectives if I have missed it.
