START-UP ISLAND. Laying the foundation to create the Larry Pages of India

A fortnight ago, we some rankings need to be made with care. Take the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). What the GEM report has consistently attempted to detect is “the interdependence between entrepreneurship and economic development”.

Notably, from just 10 economies in the first assessment cycle in 1999, more than 70 participated in GEM’s 16{+t}{+h} global entrepreneurship survey in 2014.

In India, stakeholders such as Wadhwani Foundations and GrowthEnablers run a variety of initiatives for entrepreneurs, from catching them young to running skilling programmes and mentoring new entrepreneurs. And across the world, there’s enough to show that successful entrepreneurship can help meet the world’s challenges.

Economic development won’t happen without skill development and training for diverse job roles. Wadhwani Foundations aims to help create 25 million jobs in India over the next five years, while skilling young people for jobs available now.

The charity is also keen on high-value job creation. “About 30 per cent of Silicon Valley start-ups are started by Indians, so why not more of that in India? If we can create those kinds of organisations and the jobs that are associated with them, the impact will trickle down. Why can’t we create the Larry Pages of India,” questions Ajay Kela, President and CEO, Wadhwani Foundations.

GrowthEnablers targets start-ups that don’t get picked by the best known accelerators in India. Between its free webinars and subscription offerings, the company reports that it has attracted both interest and sign-ups from across the country.

“There are great business ideas in Tier-2 cities that suffer from lack of good advice. The current infrastructure helps a fortunate five per cent and top institutes like IITs and IIMs take care of some new ventures. What about the 95 per cent that gets left behind,” asks Rajeev Banduni, co-founder, GrowthEnabler.

In the report, India fares better on physical infrastructure than on entrepreneurship education. GrowthEnablers runs monthly webinars on entrepreneurship at Uttaranchal University and gets queries from places such as Guwahati, Ludhiana and Dehradun.

The company engages with new entrepreneurs to identify a problem in their business model in the first month rather than 15 months down the line when they’ve used up seed funds and have to shut down.

And, according to Wadhwani Foundations, about five million jobs may come from start-ups created in India over the years.

This means failure among existing start-ups has to be stemmed. The charity is building a marketplace to connect entrepreneurs with mentors and investors.

With their models in India working well, these stakeholders are experimenting with attempting the same in other parts of the world.

Again, some rankings and reports don’t capture it all.

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