Role of India as a Global Entrepreneurial Economy at Startup Nations Summit 2015

Often I am asked a common question by almost everyone around me, that Yatin why do you do so much of social work and charity. Whats in it for you? How do you make money? Are you an investor?Are you an incubator? While others think I am just traveling all the time without doing much, and others think I am a millionaire splurging cash traveling around the world. Ecosystem builder is my answer to that, however 99.5% do not understand much about it. I usually do not respond much except giving a smile and asking god to bless them all. I left Delhi in mid of November after a positive launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week in Delhi by Minister of Entrepreneurship Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy at our fellow partners event and delivered a brief talk about entrepreneurship to some management students at a private event hosted by Young Indians (Yi) Delhi chapter, for a 40 day tour of Mexico followed by United States. I was anyways in high spirit with some of these positive events, however this time it wasn’t the usual business trip, but an official time off my crazy Delhi schedule to engage with some of the most influential people from different continents, countries and cities around the world. It was the Global Entrepreneurship Week happening around the world while I was transiting through US to reach my first destination Mexico City the capital of one of most populated cities of Latin America “Mexico”. I had heard stories about the city from some close friends and colleagues but finally I got to experience it myself. As soon as I landed, it reminded me of Delhi with its hospitality, a large city which surely reflected the income disparity between the rich, middle class and the poor. Interestingly inspite of being next door neighbour of US, development and access to capital has been very limited in the country, with handful of VC’s and maximum investment not exceeding $50mn in a single company over the last few years. However, the infrastructure was good, smooth roads, good buildings and some amazing coworking spaces like Startup Mexico’s (SUM) campus in the city. I was fortunate to be representing India on a 5 continent panel discussion, and realised we surely are much ahead in the game as compared to some of the most developed and developing markets around the world. Our hundreds of million dollar startup rounds and some of the billion dollar e-tailer stories have been popular, while others like PayTM, OYO rooms and Urban Clap were never even heard by them. It was surely motivating to see that somewhere we were moving in right direction and India has alot of experience, innovations and knowledge to showcase.

My next stop on the 6 day tour to Mexico was in Monterrey located on the North Eastern side of Mexico with a close proximity to the state of Texas in United States. This was for the annual summit of Startup Nations, an organisation under the Global Entrepreneurship Network supported by Kauffman Foundation to engage and support policy makers in different countries on strengthening their initiatives around entrepreneurship. This time it was in Monterrey hosted by INADEM, the public insitution engaged in developing entrepreneurship across Mexico. This was my third participation in their annual summit while second official representation from India as Startup India. Startup Nations currently comprises of over 60 nations with reprentation by some government departments and private organisations like mine. It has always provided insights to most of the entrepreneurial economies and initiatives taken by various organisations to strengthen their local entrepreneurship ecosystem. Entrepreneurship was taken too lightly in India, until recently when we started hearing some success stories out of India. The major topic of discussion amongst our group was to understand the reason of startup boom. Is it the sexiness of entrepreneurship due to success stories or the need of entrepreneurs to solve some real problems? For me personally it was the latter, primarily due to the need to solve our local problems, develop our cities and create sufficient jobs to keep our rapidly growing and energetic youth population engaged on something which keeps them excited, motivated and closer to their home towns. Not sure, how many would understand its impact, but the ones who do will defintely support this. Each country has its unique way to solve their problems, some have to fight local social issues, for some its about revival of their economies and cities, while for others its about bringing the next generation of innovators together. I had the opportunity to spend time with some key government officials from Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia and South Korea to name a few, in understanding their approach towards entrepreneurship, understand about startup visa initiatives, e-biz registration process, startup competitions and policies around tax exemption for entrepreneurs and investors. The most promising and motivating feedback for me was the popularity of our Prime Minister and some of our key initiatives including $2bn startup capital allocated in last years financial budget which is getting deployed through various state governments across the country. A few big developments on this include initiatives by Government of Rajasthan to draft their own startup act and allocating around $100mn to support startups in their state. According to me, this is a very positive sign and some of our friends in organisations like Startup Oasis do owe a big appreciation behind such efforts. We are also getting to see some strong support from Government of AP and Telangana as well as Punjab who have been planning similar policies and initiatives. With Central Government’s initiative to develop a separate ministry for entrepreneurship spear headed by Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy and local initiatives by some of the state CM’s including enterprising Mr Chandrababu Naidu and Mrs Vasundhara Raje Scindia, the country will surely see a stronger rise in the startup culture.

The best development of our trip was to form an Asian Startup Exchange Program where in countries including South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and India would try to have regional exchange programs between their countries to provide new market access and exposures to their local startups. Most of my fellow colleagues have taken a promise from me for a formal invitation to India to understand more about the diversity and the growing startup culture. I am looking forward to hosting them hopefully in 2016.