“India can become a start-up superpower by 2024 or sooner, with a few improvements”

Some companies and countries achieve more than their potential while others achieve far less than their true potential – the difference lies largely in the culture. The US and Israel have achieved more than their potential because of their work culture and maturity of their systems. Work moves much faster in US and this is because, right from a janitor who takes pride in his work and does a job to the head of a company, everyone focusses on getting their job done to the best of their ability, which happens only partly and in pockets in India. We are largely an intuition driven culture as opposed to data driven. So, those who have tasted success with intuition before will continue to rely on intuition again, which may not ensure success the second time. Also, we are a culture that does not easily admit to making a mistake. It is crucial to accept one’s mistake and change direction quickly, especially for leaders and heads.

Traditionally India has been a country of software delivery experts, as evident from the success in outsourcing that we have enjoyed in the last 30+ years. But, that success came with a cost — you need someone to tell you what to do and what to build, as a result, we lack Product Management skills — defining a product vision and strategy that is differentiated, analysing market and competitive conditions, prioritising features, arriving at the right pricing, packaging, creating a product release roadmap, providing cross-functional leadership between engineering teams, sales/marketing and support, and getting the right go-to-market strategy. We don’t have many Product experts to learn from and hence end up achieving less than desired.

A broader and more innovative start-up ecosystem will evolve when funds are available to start-ups at various stages. We see a drop in the seed stage funding by 21 per cent to $151 million in 2018. Early stage funding saw a flat growth of 4 per cent with $1 billion. I believe that more early stage investments including a healthy number of Angels will foster and support broader innovation as opposed to low risk copycat safe bets.

There is a lot of raw talent but it needs to be nurtured and put in the right direction to accomplish more than the potential. India has more young qualified talent than any other country on the planet. We need more mentors. It was very easy to find free and timely advice in the Valley. Having a great idea will only take you so far as ‘Execution’ is the most important skill and Silicon Valley has evolved and learned to invest in people/teams as opposed to ideas. It is about believing in a team that can build value in whatever they build, and efficiently execute. Both entrepreneurs and investors must learn to see failures as the most valuable learning experience, that will benefit them in their next venture. A failed founder of a start-up in Israel for example, has a greater chance to raise money than someone who was successful in the past venture. I'm yet to see enough evidence of that in India. Also, successful entrepreneurs collaborate without worrying about someone copying their ideas/strategy. How good is your strategy, if it can be copied easily? Also, it boils down to truly believing that there is something to be learned from every person and experience. While NASSCOM is doing a great job in facilitating collaboration, we need more involvement from everyone.

Governments in every region played a major role in shaping the start-up ecosystem either by completely staying out (US) or by facilitating 100 per cent (China). We are slightly different and in between the spectrum, which makes us more unpredictable - recent issues with Aadhaar and NBFC are some examples. Start-ups certainly lost some momentum and hence time because of some of these decisions. One could argue that India has a tendency to leapfrog and while I agree with it completely, there are certain aspects that can only change with time and deliberate efforts. To conclude, we are definitely poised to be the most preferred destination for investments, if it is not already. And we can expedite this with some of the improvements I’ve talked about earlier. I’m betting on India.

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