Start Up, But Also Stay The Course

Every strong initiative needs an Evangelist ...and for Entrepreneurship in India, our Prime Minister donned that mantle very well last evening. Every entrepreneur needs to lead from the front, inspire thousands to follow her/his Vision and think at Scale and so we have a role model here in Prime Minister Modi. By the way his last disclosure as per the RTI Act said he has never taken a day off since becoming the PM - something all of your looking to Start Up in India would need to get used to.
        

Our statistics says India had about 5000 Start Ups in the last year, but let's face it ...we need one million First Generation Entrepreneurs in the next 3 years and ten million in the next seven , for a county of close to 1.3 billion people...otherwise we will remain at the Starting Gate instead of being a Start Up Nation. We believe we are an entrepreneurial country and its in our DNA - lot of it coming from the fact that we have a legacy of Family Businesses , but most of them have not scaled and the next generation is not looking to take it forward. 
        

Not much has changed from when I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur more than 30 years back. It was very tough then. No Funding no VC or PE. Family pressure was to get a good degree and job and tread the safe path. And everyone around looked at you critically , like you had failed to get a good job and as a cop out turned to be self employed ! When I meet many of you today - I hear the same rhetoric.

Worse still,  I believe we do not need sops from the government nor funding from VCs to get off the fence and jump into the world of Start Ups ...you need to get over your Fear of Failure. This to me plagues most of us -  and once we all cross that red line, knowing we will fail - not once but a hundred times and it's OK to fail as long as we know how to get up and go forward - that's when we will be a nation of many million start ups. 

Entrepreneurship is about courage and ability to take risks and then stay with it. It's about deep conviction in yourself first and then in your idea or business.

In the  book I wrote - I start with saying "entrepreneurship is a journey, not an Outing. You cannot make a deal with yourself by saying, "I'm going to try this out for two years and see".

Entrepreneurship is about People and team and culture. Then comes capital and funding. ( my deepest concern of late is the benchmark everyone makes - "for Starting Up I need to be Funded".....but if you see the real success stories ...its of people who failed many many times before they succeeded and the same ones who started with no funding and yet learnt to bootstrap and they live that same life today and it's about them being Mavericks who broke glass ceilings because they are meant to be broken.

Get clarity on this as only then did what we started yesterday with the Governments announcements make us a country of Start Ups .
   

As an entrepreneur you do not really need the government. You are not waiting to start up based on sops and schemes. We need the Government to make it easy to do business and I think we are heading in the right direction.

We need them to evangelize so we can change the DNA of a country and a family fabric that encourages the younger generation to take risks and go out in the world and follow their dream and I think here too we are moving ahead. 

For all of you waiting to Start Up.....no one will sound the bugle for the charge up the hill. Bring your own bugle ( or drum or sitar) and running shoes, set your sights on the peak and settle for nothing else. As a country we have this one more big chance. The odds, in my view are an even 50/50.

But we have what it takes to take our fantastic nation on the global stage and out perform. And we will do it with the youngest, most energetic, most passionate people in the world, with optimism, courage and conviction.

 And remember ....Its not just about Starting Up .....it's about STAYING THE COURSE....are you ready for that.....