Has BharatNet fulfilled its end task of providing functional internet?
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on November 20, 2015.
Recently, a young author from Singapore who hails from Bihar authored a book called Startup Capitals. Besides sharing several success stories and information about the ecosystem of start-ups in the region, Zafar Anjum also co-founded a company by the same name as the title of the book.
They have also been organising a series of conferences in major metros such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hong Kong as well as in Singapore. These conferences are also titled Startup Capitals and are being used to promote the book.
A fortnight back, I was on a panel discussion organised by Startup Capitals and the focus was if Delhi has the right culture for attracting start-ups. Because of lack of time we decided that rather than speak, we would make it a question-and-answer session. The audience was a mixed bag of students, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and media. I am keen to share some of the questions and my answers to them.
What are the qualities of a successful entrepreneur, considering that, statistically, 90% of the entrepreneurs fail? Are the institutions training in entrepreneurship any good?
Entrepreneurs are born and cannot be made. Since entrepreneurship is about taking risk, it is actually in your blood—if you can take risk or not. Besides, entrepreneurship is not about making money or becoming a millionaire, it is about identifying a problem or an issue and getting passionate about finding a solution to the problem and working toward solving it till it is achieved. The issue may be of any kind and not necessarily a social problem or for that matter related to poverty.
The reason 90% of start-ups fail is that they may not have been risk-taking people or may not have identified a truly serious problem to find a solution to, and in all likelihood the motivation must have been to make money rather than build an enterprise to provide a solution to a societal problem.
And the reason all those institutes who claim to provide entrepreneurs training and skilling will continue to flourish is that there are always millions who want to become entrepreneurs.
Do you think metros, cities and urban areas have better start-up and entrepreneurship ecosystems and opportunities than rural areas?
The reason we hear more about start-ups and entrepreneurship from metros and cities is that that is where journalists and reporters focus their attention. Whereas the fact is that in India, if you are in a rural area, you can perhaps not survive if you’re not an entrepreneur. In rural areas, one is an innovator and entrepreneur by compulsion and necessity. In several cases they are at so much risk that they may not survive or get their next meal if they don’t take the risk, to do something to eke out a living. However, the pity is that we always look at start-ups from the perspective of capital and not innovation, societal solution or in a hyperlocal manner. Because of our faulty way of looking at start-ups which is driven by funding and investment, we lose out on several hundreds of innovations that come from rural areas and from frugal ecosystems.
If at all, the investor communities should look at and line up behind those who are the risk-takers and those who have identified a perfect problem and have the innovation to solve it, rather than IITs and IIMs. In fact, IITs and IIMs are the most unlikely place for the risk-takers and innovators. If the person was risk-taking, they would never end up in an IIT or IIM in the first place. It is those who cannot take risk and those who want to be assured of their future who go to such institutions.
What’s the correlation between entrepreneurs, start-ups and capital?
Like I said, entrepreneurs are born and they always become passionate about an idea and work on them with conviction. However, start-ups are made. A start-up may not be an idea or conviction of an entrepreneur but in all likelihood it is an initiative of someone who wants to become a millionaire and is always looking for capital. An entrepreneur never looks for capital; it is capital that looks for them.
What kind of scenario do you see in the next 10 years for the start-up ecosystem?
Obviously we are not going to hear the stories of all those unsuccessful start-ups and the obituaries of the capital used to fund them. Having said that, we are going to see a lot of successful start-ups in the area of finding innovative solutions for our consumers, in the area of governance, accountability, micro enterprises, rural health, women’s empowerment, shared economy, and crowdsourcing. And if I am right, in all those success stories of start-ups we are going to see a silver lining of digital intervention.
I am at your disposal if any of you are interested to know what kind of ideas can bring peace and prosperity in rural areas and how pursuing them with societal onus and converting them as sustainable business is possible.
Osama Manzar is founder-director of Digital Empowerment Foundation and chair of Manthan and mBillionth awards. He serves on the board of World Summit Award and Association of Progressive Communication. He is co-author of NetCh@kra—15 Years of Internet in India & Internet Economy of India. Tweet him @osamamanzar
Related posts
