Why India lacks a good startup ecosystem?

New
SPki38

New

SPki38
Sep 26, 2020 145 Comments

After working in US and China, I keep wondering why India doesn't have the quality of founders who can successfully start, scale and IPO their companies. What is it that the founders or the whole ecosystem lacks? Why don't we have more startup success stories like Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent etc ? Am asking because I want to help Indian founders make great companies, so just want to understand what's the opinion of the market out there.

#startup #founders #India

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 145 Comments
  • Twilio
    hgsadg

    Go to company page Twilio

    hgsadg
    Good talent from india always moves outside
    Sep 26, 2020 13
  • Let’s understand the difference between India and China..

    1) all the companies that you see in China (alibaba , ten cent , baidu etc..) exist because the US counterpart (Amazon, Facebook, Twitter,google ) off these companies were either blocked or over regulated by the Chinese government ...
    2) most of the US companies who could have crushed these startups chose to not operate there + China internet is completely behind a firewall.
    3) Most Chinese tech started as a copy cat product of American companies but under the official protection of CCP.
    4) rest of the world doesn’t have the same level of protection from There government . For example in India the dominant tech companies are US based companies and the internet is not sanctioned....
    5) India still has a healthy startup ecosystem... just lookup startup in e-commerce and services sector in India
    Sep 26, 2020 6
  • Tough question, but I think you have it in reverse. The question you should ask is how did the US and China develop their impressive ecosystems.

    They are the outliers and not India - 99% of countries don't have a great startup eco system.

    One thing that both China and the US have in common is that they have a huge local market where local companies have a huge advantage and they dont really need to grow anywhere else to be successful.
    Sep 26, 2020 9
    • Indians are lazy. They try to get away by doing the bare minimum. For example, they will dig a road and will not put it back in original state. They will build a house and not complete it. They will dump garbage outside of the house and not bother about properly disposing it. This gets trickled in every part of the society.

      For startups and ecosystems, it requires ‘lot’ of people doing the right things. That doesn’t happen in India. Few good people try to do the right thing and they do get some success.
      Dec 30, 2020
    • @NwNs51 I'd like to respectfully disagree. The same people who do all the things you just mentioned stop doing it once they move abroad because they will be ostracized if they did that in another country where it's not allowed. It's the mentality and the ecosystem, the platform that needs some motivation and a little bit of push. Indians are not lazy. They are some of the most hard-working, ambitious people I have met. And I'm glad that OP has created this post to find the deficiencies in the system that can be weeded out to make for a much better tech environment.
      Feb 21, 2021
  • Facebook
    floridicon

    Go to company page Facebook

    floridicon
    Historically these “valleys” have cumulative advantages that become very hard to compete with. This was true in Manchester 200 years ago where nobody could compete with their textiles. There were attempts to do so in India, where cotton was grown, but the same things that keep Silicon Valley in the lead were happening in Manchester - effectively a small community of people who understood their tech better than anywhere else in the world and together were hard to out-compete.
    Sep 26, 2020 5
    • Cisco
      james00007

      Go to company page Cisco

      james00007
      Sharing equity is hard for Indian founders. I find them “greedy”. I interviewed couple of years back for an early stage indian startup at dir level position. I was offered 0.2%. Thats a midlevel sw engg ratio in valley. Unless you mint lot of millionaires there is no incentive for best folks to jump
      Oct 7, 2020
    • Snap
      TopTC

      Go to company page Snap

      TopTC
      Very true. ☝️
      Jan 4, 2021
  • The Indian education system and mindset does not train you to fail and hence lack of entrepreneurship..people move to safer path of having a job at FAANG.
    Sep 26, 2020 4
    • Oracle
      guddubhiya

      Go to company page Oracle

      guddubhiya
      I agree, this is the only reason. Our education system completely shuts off our creativity. We are trained to be yes men and not take a tough route. It takes substantial level of consciousness to think beyond that trained mindset.
      Dec 13, 2020
    • Well it's not only the education system, though. Is it?

      It's because of the life there. What my time there taught me was that everyday was a fight for survival be it taking public transportation or crossing the street. In the US or in most developed nations, we take those things for granted. It's easy to sit in a developed part of the world where you can't even deal with 10 mins of power loss and blame the education system in a developing nation where the basic infrastructure does not exist yet. Their day to day is very different from ours. Because fewer people have access to the internet, and fewer people have access to computers, even fewer have personal laptops, the basic setup is not there for them to succeed. There are more people that can try in the US, can become self-taught experts. That is simply not there in India in abundance.
      Feb 21, 2021