Those who made it big in business should offer a helping hand to fledgling firms, said Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of Infosys. He also asked those successful in businesses to allocate small amounts of money and support at least one or two start-ups. “This can spread across the country. This will go a long way in building the start-up ecosystem,” Kris said.

The soft-spoken IITian had served Infosys as its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer during 2007 and 2011, which incidentally was a turbulent phase for the IT industry.

Kris, along with another Infosys co-founder SD Shibulal, set up a ₹200-crore investment firm Axilor Ventures to invest in tech-based start-ups. “When a successful entrepreneur spares some amount on start-up investments, it will create a whole new generation of entrepreneurs,” he pointed out.

Kris, who is actively working with start-ups in the last few years, has identified three broad areas for the development of the ecosystem. In his personal capacity and with Axilor Ventures, Kris has made about 65 investments in start-ups so far.

Kick-starting start-ups

Answering a question on concentration of start-ups in a few cities and the challenges in spreading the ecosystem to other geographies, Kris said there were several issues to be tackled. “I agree that the start-up ecosystem is concentrated in a few metropolitan cities. We need to create such ecosystems in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. We also need to create such ecosystems in the engineering colleges. We should also promote rural entrepreneurship as well,” he said..

“Each of these has a different set of challenges. In Tier-II and Tier-III cities, the challenge is mentoring and angel investors. How do you get them started? They need small amounts of money to set the ball rolling. Successful businessmen should make small investments,” he observed.

“Mentoring is slightly more difficult. We should also look at technologies and manage the mentoring part using video-conferencing facilities wherever it is necessary. We need a culture of academicians trying their hand in entrepreneurship. We need to coach them. I see no reason why our research should not be converted into products,” he said.

With regard to rural entrepreneurship, Kris felt that the country needed an out-of-the-box model. “We need to think differently. Any business is a start-up. We need to create business plans that can be replicated. They need seed funding in the form of a grant,” he said. “We need to create business plans, handhold them for 1-2 years. We need to create opportunities for them to share experiences so that others can learn from experiences. It will help create rural entrepreneurial ecosystems,” he observed.

‘Great opportunity’

To a question on the investments he and his investment firm made, Kris said investments had been made in a spectrum of start-ups which were in different stages of growth. The investments range from ₹5-20 lakhs in early stage start-ups, some could be a few crores in others, he said.

Kris felt the quality of start-ups had gone up. “We have seen a lot more deep tech start-ups coming in. I’m very keen to see academic research getting translated into start-ups. It’s a great opportunity for us in India. It’s an exciting period for me,” he said.

“For one, we’ve invested in a healthcare technologies start-up that came up with a thermal imaging screening solution for breast cancer. One, it’s a new way of doing the screening. Two, costs are significantly lower. And, three, it suits the cultural nuisances of India,” he said. “All this at one-tenth of the cost as it disrupts the traditional way of screening. I feel this can change the way breast cancer screenings are done,” he said.

Technology and jobs

Replying to a question on growing job losses due to automation and reducing employment opportunities for Indian job seekers in the United States, Kris said newer technologies would always mean losses in jobs.

“There will be job losses. There were always job losses. As and when new technologies are introduced, the nature of jobs change. It is a continuous process of disruption. Repetitive jobs, especially the jobs that will require processing large amounts of data, will go. But new jobs will be created,” he said.

“For one, Facebook is hiring in large numbers to look at images and certifying images. New jobs in curation of data and data massage are getting created. What we should do is to equip people with skills required for the newer jobs,” he summed up.

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