Decoding Technology Startups in the Indian Ecosystem Are there quality tech startups actually catering to issues plaguing humankind
By Rahul R
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When it comes to technology-driven solutions, entrepreneurship is at its peak today when we consider the sheer number of new ventures that have mushroomed over the last couple of years. Now, these deserve a comprehensive evaluation as the technology sector cannot afford to witness a saturation point with everybody catering to everything. Hence, quality of these ventures is the focal point.
The best judges of quality (and merit) of startups and the solutions they offer is the investors (along with end consumers); both angel as well as venture capitalists (VCs) who set aside increased time to evaluate not only the technology offerings but also business scalability.
In this regard, Entrepreneur India sought to know from investors as to how they view the technology startups currently disrupting even the most mundane of domains and sectors in India.
Is there enough quality in today's startups?
"The Indian start-up ecosystem is relatively young and hence lacks depth," states Apurva Chamaria who is Charter Member at TiE Delhi and an investor with a portfolio of more than 20 investments across sectors with a keen focus on next-gen technology.
Chamaria believes that approximately 30% of urban India contributes to 70% of GDP and 70% of rural only to 30% of GDP, thereby creating a rift. This has to balance out in the future and till this gap remains unbalanced it could cause further growth in existing societal problems
Nonetheless, he is also optimistic about certain startups which are actually founded to cater to focus on societal issues such as access to clean water, fighting unemployment, illiteracy, child abuse, and violence.
Chamaria sees quality in startups such as mySafeBus, Smarter Homes Technologies, WeConnect, Babajob, Aasaanjobs, QuikrJobs, and KicksStartJobs, along with Chimple' all of which are working towards mitigating the above issues.
"Emerging technologies having a global impact and potential to disrupt existing methods of solving these challenges and I am hopeful that soon more start-ups will emerge which will be solving these challenges," he adds.
In summary, the cause taken up by ventures is important and connects with investors across domains.
"At this point in time, we are evaluating businesses serving micro healthcare aspects such as Wellness, Nutrition, Fitness, and more. Scalability and the team mustered by a venture is also looked at," adds Revathy Ashok who is Co-Founder of Strategy Garage and a mentor-cum investor.
She stresses that with quality, it is also the competency of the team and business scalability that matters for ventures to truly being called qualitative and catering to problems across various sectors.
The way ahead – making startups qualitative as well as scalable (to sustain)
As far as effectively ensuring that ventures are sustainable whilst displaying their creative acumen, there are micro-aspects that need to be taken care of at the initial stages itself.
As per Chamaria, these micro aspects include:
Making hiring outstanding people the number one priority – for founders.
Building an on-demand scalable technology platform
Avoiding redundancy – on the part of founders
"Don't only focus on wealth creation, but also focus on leaving behind a legacy of creating a better world then you inherited," advises Chamaria to the newbie technology startups.
Hence, it is clear that the Indian ecosystem for startups holds promise; the key is not to join the rat-race but to focus on building sustainability. Always remember that turning entrepreneur is easy, but starting and sustaining entrepreneurial ventures is difficult.
