Indian Startup Culture Impacts India’s Entrepreneurs
The Indian startup culture is transforming the nation’s society. Until recently, if a youth told friends or family they’re giving up high paying jobs for their own business or startup, their sanity would have been called into question.
Indians – as a people – are known to play it safe. The Indian culture is fearful of failure and would rather not try at all, than try and fail. It is completely different to the Israeli culture, for example.
The middle class dream in India, since the early 2000s, has been to get a job in the IT sector. Because of the rise of IT outsourcing companies such as Infosys, Wipro and TCS, there was a demand for tens of thousands of engineers almost every year. Soon, there were hundreds of engineering colleges training people for jobs in IT companies.
High Demand Causing Change ForThe Indian Startup
But things changed around 2008. There was a massive economic recession, as well as major technological changes, because of which the IT outsourcing model wasn’t so hot any more. This led to massive retrenchments in almost all IT companies in India. Suddenly, the demand for engineers stopped growing, but the supply – or the number of engineering graduates continued to increase.
It was then that a lot of frustrated young men and women, such as Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, founders of Flipkart, which went to change Indian e-commerce for ever. Additionally, Richa Kar, who started Zivame, made women’s clothing more easily accessible to tens of millions around the country. These young professionals gave up their cushy jobs and caught the startup bug at the right time.
What has happened since then has been quite remarkable. The bigger salaries offered to the students at the prestigious IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), were not made by Infosys or Wipro – in fact, none of India’s top engineering graduates really want to join these companies. The bigger offers were made by e-commerce startups – Flipkart, Snapdeal and so on, which did not even exist until a few years ago.
It’s now clear the phrase “Indian startup” is no longer an oxymoron – it is now a reality. No longer do the most talented Indian graduates hope to get a job-for-life at an IT major. Every young and ambitious person in India wants to become the next Sachin Bansal or Binny Bansal and create the next Flipkart.
The change in mentality is not yet complete, and is as yet a work in progress. But there can be no denying that the startup culture has taken root in India. It has been helped largely by the spread of fast broadband internet as well as the massive growth in smartphone sales. Suddenly, India, which had skipped the internet and PC revolution of the 1990s, was quick to get on board this time.
Technology was now suddenly accessible to a majority of India’s population. The growth of smartphones led to a massive demand for companies specializing in the development of mobile apps and games. The spread of the internet led to a slew of e-commerce startups, selling everything from clothes to second-hand cars, books to electronics. In fact, there are today e-commerce startups that sell groceries – which is really quite stunning.
India has been quick to latch on to the technology bug because the country has a remarkably young population. Over 65 percent of Indians are below the age of 35. Having a young population can be a double edged sword – there is no way to predict the path taken by the young.
They could go on a destructive path and take to religious extremism, as seen in Pakistan and the Middle-East, or they could take a constructive approach and become creators and entrepreneurs – as seen in Israel. The young people of India have clearly chosen the second path, which should be quite a relief to the rest of the world.
