10 (Tongue-in-cheek) Reasons Why India Can’t Build The Next Apple Or Google
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Eric Schmidt has made us proud. By saying India’s entrepreneurial innovators have the potential to build the “next Google” if the country “plays its cards right” and ensures Internet access for millions of its citizens. His statement came in an essay written for the book Reimagining India: Unlocking The Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower, edited by the global consulting firm According to the former
“Can anyone of those companies ultimately become the next Google? Of course.”
He then goes on to elaborate all the right ‘technology’ measures India should take to make it happen. But unknown to him, a war of words has already started on the Indian shores. In a Live Chat on LinkedIn,
Student start-up… OMG!
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Get a job first; your family has some expectations.
Understandable, if you are from a middle-income family with loads of burden. Your kid brother needs education, as good as you had. You need to marry off your sister (again, refer to the above movie). What about buying a home (after all, mom and pop stayed in shabby, rented places all their life)? If you are a woman, your family could be sitting in a dharna when you try to move out and start something on your own. Have a job, get married, settle down – that’s the clear career graph for you.
Work, ugh! We are a clan of dreamers.
Well, we are not saying that, but an ad campaign did it pretty smartly. The entire display board was smudged with a beautiful shade of blue with just a small green spot at one corner. And the text read: Blue: Dreamer; Green: Doer. Need we say more?
Sure, come back for the money when you’re the next
If you have overcome the first three hurdles, chances are you are not a trust fund and need plenty of
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Want to start up? Give us your pound of flesh.
This input comes straight from an IIT passout who tried to set up his first solar power project in South Bengal. Even after a year, the venture is stranded mid-way, permissions are pending and
What
That’s a real problem, to be sure. Very few
If innovations are out, let’s do what we do best – copycating.
Majority of the Indian start-ups do just that to survive. Most of the concepts and business models introduced in the US are closely followed here and seem to be making good money. Both
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‘No-transparency’ is in, but that does hurt business.We are not taking sides here, but most will remember the ugly showdown between Lilliput Kidswear and its PE investors – Bain Capital and TPG Capital. The PE firms took the company to court over alleged accounting fraud. The same thing seems to be happening to home-grown kids’ wear retailer Catmoss as PE investor SAIF Partners alleged that the company was selling its assets, doctoring its books and fudging meeting minutes. Then there is the painful case of Timtara.com, the controversial e-commerce portal who allegedly failed to deliver and shut shop when its promoters were arrested. If integrity is the first
Snif… Snif… I don’t want to be your co-founder.
Nothing can cure that holier-than-thou attitude that ails most start-up founders. And the result is a painful walkout by key people – right from co-founders to senior executives. Oh yes, most of them are sweet about it, saying they need to start all over again and would love to get a kick out of their new assignments. But then, people like Bal Krishn Birla, co-founder of the online hypermarket ZopNow.com, complain openly about being wrongly ousted from their own companies. That kind of conflict might remind you of Steve Jobs but it’s hardly an ideal situation for an early-stage business to thrive upon.
Can’t wait to sell, if you give us a
That’s the exit line for most of the start-ups and investors are only too happy to go with the flow. Well, that’s not exactly what Snapchat is doing right now (it has refused a $3 billion offer from the mighty Facebook) or what WhatsApp did a year ago. But then, ventures at home are always in a hurry to get over with it if they can and walk away with a tidy sum. Of course, that is sound business sense but it hardly helps growth at a global level. Patience pays at times and
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