The future of entrepreneurship: Jump start the start up

If there is one announcement that has caused the greatest excitement in India in the last few years, it has been the announcement of the 10,000 start-up initiative by NASSCOM in 2013. With thousands of applications received since then and the start-up eco-system in the country flourishing as never before, it can be said that entrepreneurship has really come of age as an occupation that is foremost in the mind of any person in the country,  young and old. The recently minted Ministry of Skills and Entrepreneurship, the announcement of CSR benefits for investments in incubators for start-ups and the burgeoning coffers of angel networks and venture capitalists in the country are all other indicators of an entrepreneurial engine that is ready to move to high gear.
Predictably, information technology, mobility and e-commerce have caught the fancy of many Indian youngsters and the runaway valuations of Flipkart and Snapdeal have brought the dollar glint to the eyes of millions of young people in the country. The glittering launch of Digital India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the beginning of July showed that new opportunities will emerge in this segment every day.  Multiple applications that connect citizens to citizens, citizens to public services and businesses and educational institutions to each other and their customers will have to be developed and deployed, an imperative that clearly offers huge opportunities for the government to collaborate with the vast network of product creators and small domestic firms in the IT sector as well as the traditional large systems integrators.

One of the most encouraging announcements in this category has been the establishment of Centres of Excellence for internet of things (IoT) on a PPP model between the government and industry members with the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) providing up to 50 percent of the project costs for the first five years. IoT is the single largest innovation of the industrial internet and will connect up all data in a seamless manner to create a new generation of connected manufacturing and related activities. This partnership has the potential to create a new revolution in and for India. It will create myriad opportunities for new age entrepreneurs to build companies that enable seamless connectivity for manufacturing, retail, healthcare, utilities and even smart cities. One can expect to see a new revolution that connects real users to technology providers to be the next big opportunity for Make in India and Digital India to be meaningful for all participants and provide new energy to IT start-ups.

 The interesting part of today’s entrepreneurship opportunity is that there are opportunities beyond IT, digital and e-commerce as well. In the US, 10 of the 20 fastest-growing occupations are related to healthcare, and this industry will generate more than three million jobs by the year 2018. The aging population there is expected to create opportunities galore for entrepreneurs targeting geriatric healthcare opportunities (Protea Healthcare is addressing this opportunity in India), services for retirees in areas ranging from nutritional and psychological counselling to real estate and recreational services planning and wellness and natural health.
new entrepreneurship opportunities flagged in the US include social media and digital marketing consulting, particularly in the ever changing world of mobility, home improvement services, services for the physically challenged, children’s educational services and the good old area that has created a $150 billion industry in India -- outsourcing. Outsourcing within the country and offshore is across a plethora of traditional and new areas and looks likely to gather momentum as the economic woes in most countries deepen. Alternative energy, genetic research, biotechnology, stem cell research and security services will continue to attract venture capital dollars.
So what is the new formula for successful entrepreneurship that every person, young or old should look at to make it big in India? Let’s not forget the time tested and traditional recipes for success which even today young folks ignore in their excitement over their own idea. First, ensure that you are adequately funded. The road to successful entrepreneurship is littered with the corpses of great ideas which could not be brought to fruition because the entrepreneur ran out of cash somewhere along the way. Second, ensure you have a team with complementary skills that can weather the storms – of marketing, operations and finance that will surely come up and attempt to wreck your entrepreneurship voyage. And third, make sure that the market that you are chasing has a reasonably long duration. The best products and services can wither away if the market context changes. Many a time, this could have been predicted if only the entrepreneur or someone in the team had stepped the party over the first few successes and looked for early warnings of change.

And what are the new realities of entrepreneurship?  The biggest opportunity and also the greatest challenge is the extent to which marketing has moved to “pull” from “push”. The days are over when big bucks spent on front page ads in frontline dailies or successive 30 and 40 second spots on major TV shows would attract the spending that is desired. A “push” of loud advertising can get some brand recognition but the real pull to purchase will get generated and sustained only through a sustained ability to attract and excite audiences who want to search and come to their own conclusions rather than be bombarded with messages.
The related point that needs to be made is that all entrepreneurs need to consider the knowledge forces (K-Force) that can impact their business. A path breaking idea that emanated from PhD research at IIT Bombay  was that K-Force or the confluence of information and knowledge that could have impact on a business idea is one of the key drivers for successful business enterprise creation. In today’s obsession with big data, one tends to forget that the need to get and use these flows was always a critical success factor of any enterprise. Irrespective of whether it is a new product idea or a new service being launched, knowledge about new materials and processes, market dynamics and customer preferences and new knowledge which builds refreshed understanding of how to drive and succeed in the business will be essential for the success of the new entrepreneur.
 Wannabe entrepreneurs are standing up to be counted all over the country and the world with rapidly changing customer preferences pulling us and stupendous shifts in technology pushing us to take an entrepreneurial plunge. How quickly one spots and seizes a market opportunity and how nimble the company is and able to adapt to changes will be the hallmarks of the winning entrepreneurs of the future!

Dr Ganesh Natarajan is Vice Chairman and CEO of Zansar Technologies and Chairman of the National Committee on Knowledge Management & Business Transformation for CII