Dream Big and Act Bigger

I had the chance of spending some time at TieCon Mumbai last week to understand the Startup Ecosystem on the ground, hear the exciting success stories of the Indian Entrepreneurs.

TieCon Mumbai is one of the largest startup events in India which is held once an year. The Theme for 2020 is “The Decade Of Start-Ups, Kick starting the Future”.

Some of the Key insights for the startups:

Emotion and Culture of Indian consumer/Trust Factor

By nature, Indian consumers are emotional in nature, this could be attributed to many factors. It could be the culture, upbringing or the societal norms. Let me not discuss in detail the thesis behind it, rather discuss some success stories of two exciting companies.

Mr. Deepak Parekh shared on how HDFC was built on this Emotion/Trust factor of the Indian consumer. Even though HDFC promises 85% of the mortgage loan on the paper, the amount that gets disbursed to the customer account is only 65%. With the rest of the money coming from the consumer, HDFC ensured that the consumer has a skin in the game. Above all, with the "First Home" and "Apna Ghar", they drove high the Emotions of the consumer and the eventual bonding with the house, thereby drastically reducing the NPAs.

Similar story was shared by Sujeet, who runs the India's fastest unicorn, Udaan. Udaan is building strong relationships along side the emotion/trust factor of the Merchants on the ground. Merchants always has the fear factor of losing their supplier base if they default and it is one of the driving factor for merchants to repay the credit. Udaan is playing a very key role in marrying the credit and the supplier base to merchants and I strongly believe that they are going to capture a decent chunk of Indian commerce in the coming years.

Culture

Every one harped on the fact that it is the culture which is the driving factor for the success of the company.

Mr. Parkeh shared on how HDFC developed a culture of treating their employees as customers. Give your employees the same respect and space as of your customers, and as a founder, you can be ensured that your employees will drive the mission of your organization

Harsh Jain of Dream 11 shared on how their firms "DO-PUT" culture first (Data obsession, Ownership, Performance, User first and Transparency)

Ashish Hemrajani (My fav speaker) of BookMyShow shared on how he built culture in the company - Janitor sitting next to the VP and having the same lunch, goal driven, flexible working hours etc.

Execution >>> Ideation

Most of the founders started with a simple idea, iterated it, perfected it, and expanded to multiple lines of businesses. Execution of a simple idea will go a long way than the groundbreaking idea sitting in a fancy presentation

Vision of the Founders

I was really amazed by the laser focused vision of founders.

Mr. Parkeh envisioned mortgage loans to be accessible to common Indian

Sujeet and his team wants to democratize Indian commerce

Anita Dongre worked(ing) on making Indian women feel comfortable and confident in their attire

Harsh wants to bring fantasy sports to millions of Indians

In the next series, will be sharing lessons learnt on selling product to an Enterprise customer, B2B landscape, role of ESG in the startup and VC space and where the Investors are looking to invest next.

If you are a startup looking to share an interesting insight on building culture, innovation or fund raising, happy to chat.