10 things I learnt about India on my yearly sojourn

My recent two week stint in India was unlike my previous trips. And I go religiously every year if not a few times a year, the draw of the land and the love for my family both ensure that I take the 24 hour arduous journey home.

Interestingly, I still refer it to as home. Not because I dont love the US, but because I get it. I get India and Indianness without thinking about it. My sister, who only moved here 4 years ago is more American than I will ever be. But more on that later.

1. India rising is really happening. Prime Minister Modi’s enthusiasm is infectious. Watchout Zuck, you’ve created an army of zuckalikes in India. Every young IIT/IIM graduate is being sought after or has an idea that he wants to grow. Its exciting. In the last year, many luminaries such as Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Travis Kalanick, Sundar Pichai have all pledged their support for India. It comes with a vested interest, but the eyes are on India.
2. New plethora of investors are opening smaller funds?—?A majority of investors who invested too early (perhaps in 2005/2006) waited a decade are exiting while shaking their heads. But I think the ones who stick around now, will reap the benefits of those early investors. Tech is prime, smart phones are everywhere slowly but surely growing in numbers. In a country where no one initiates phone calls, but relies on missed calls, so they can have an incoming call for free?—?people are actually paying for data and downloading apps.
3. Credit card (we were repeatedly told that India has 3% credit card penetration) or no credit card, e-commerce is huge. But hey, the slate is clean. Copy cat startups are everywhere. So if the need of the hour is to start a grocery delivery startup, a food delivery startup, an e-commerce fashion startup?—?why wouldn’t I? After all, I have first mover advantage. I am being cheeky of course, in my later posts I will cover what these startups have to watch out for.
4. Infrastructure is not on par with demand?—?Traffic is mad. While I split my time between the two tech hubs Hyderabad and Bangalore, I was stranded in traffic everywhere. I mean everywhere. It took me 7 hours door to door from Hyderabad to Bangalore to take a one hour flight. Internet is slow. For cities that are boasting of the largest tech populations and presence, Internet on my phone was abysmally slow even when I got the 4G connections.
5. Consolidate, get acquired, or IPO in another country?—?A la Alibaba seems to be the norm in India. There are a lot of me-too startups in spaces like grocery delivery, fashion. Larger companies are acquiring the smaller ones. There havent been any massive IPOs which has been slightly disappointing for the investors, but nevertheless there is optimism because hey the math spells for itself. We studied the Flipkart-Myntra acquisition as part of our case study and learnt that the top grocery startups had investments from the same investor.
6. Copy cat startups aren’t the norm anymore. I was gratified to see startups like redbus.in succeed where they sought to solve a very Indian problem and are now going after scale in other emerging economies tells me one thing. That entrepreneurs in this part of the world, when they solve something here they really solve it for the world. The prices are low- development costs, real-estate costs are lower compared to costs in SV, and their products are comparable. More startups that focus on very Indian problems are thankfully rising.
7. Age is just a number?—?I was happy to see that the formula of?—?I am a 22 year old college dropout that put my startup together in a dorm phenomenon hasn’t yet caught up in India. Indian investors dont seem ageist. They seem to invest in a good idea, the execution ability of its founders and actually delivery milestones. I am not dissing everyone in silicon valley but I remember applying to a certain popular accelerator and I was told that because I wasn’t a 24 year old male college dropout, the chances of my application being reviewed were fewer. Go figure.
8. Uber vs Ola cabs || Amazon vs FlipKart?—?The war between the global companies vs the indigenous startups exist. Each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Global companies have a wealth of knowledge, the success of having already executed in other countries before entering India, and the pots of wealth that they can re-invest even if its a loss-making business initially in exchange for changing consumer habits and growing market share. Indigenous companies know their local landscape, they already have seen the tech and success behind these global businesses in other countries and are quick to learn and execute. I will cover the battle between Ola and Uber in a future post. Uber’s growing presence in India is fascinating. But suffice to say, in all these battles, ultimately the Indian consumer finally wins.
9. Corruption, sexism, security et al still exist and are quite rampant. But private enterprise can and will succeed. I am not sure that there will be multi-billion dollar exits, but there will be a few millionaires that will build a few thousand small medium enterprises. The beauty of tech is that forcibly democratizes the process of winning. You cant win if your product isnt good, or your service isnt good. But you certainly can win, with a little bit of capital, a real urge to solve a real problem and real resourcefulness.
10. People in India are waiting to scale new heights. The socio-economic status of India and the closed economy till the mid-nineties, did not allow for private enterprise to flourish. Which meant that the only viable jobs everyone took were the ones that paid the bills. Turn to the late 90’s a new plethora of tech jobs ensured that a huge number of students opted to become engineers whether they liked it or not, it was the lucrative thing to do. Turn to the mid 2010’s, times are a-changing. People are actually choosing professions that they are passionate about. This combination of passion, intellect and enterprise is going to be an indomitable combination to beat. Indians building companies for Indians to consume is not new, but technology is making that journey a lot shorter.

Please write to me directly at yrdeepika.at.gmail.com if you want to reach out.