Get real, India

#StartupIndia #StandupIndia

If you’re anywhere close to India’s capital New Delhi, or watching a mainstream Indian news channel, chances are you’re already witnessing a startup carnival of sorts.

Some of the world’s most high profile investors and entrepreneurs including Softbank’s Nikesh Arora and Masayoshi Son, apart from Uber’s maverick founder Travis are among those being roped in by the Indian government to be part of the StartupIndia, StandupIndia initiative on January 16. These icons are offering mentoring and sharing best practices on how to get funded, build new businesses.

The government is vowing to improve the regulatory environment to ensure the country’s biggest startups do not flee overseas when it comes to incorporating their companies.

Snapdeal cofounder Kunal Bahl and Oyo Room’s Ritesh Agarwal are sharing lessons from their entrepreneurial journeys that could inspire the next generation of founders.

Overall, quite a show is being orchestrated right at the beginning of a year in which both investors and founders are bracing for some reality checks.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong in celebrating entrepreneurship.

It’s actually heartening to see entrepreneurship go mainstream in India, achieve the celebrity status that rivals the stardom enjoyed by the Bollywood and some of the cricket stars.

But is this celebration a little too early? And are we celebrating the right role models?

You only have to read this Economist story http://www.theworldin.com/article/10454/year-unicorn?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/theworldin2016 and this really insightful piece from Haresh Chawla http://www.foundingfuel.com/article/the-fault-in-our-startups/ to get a grip on what’s really going on.

In his piece, Haresh Chawla uses recent crisis of food tech startup’s in India to highlight the mindless and blind cloning of business models from elsewhere to build unsustainable companies in the country.

The usually blunt Economist said the investors will become impatient with the Unicorns in 2016, and warned there will be more startup failures this year.

Sumanth Raghavendra too keeps bringing reality checks by questioning the hypes in the country’s startup ecosystem through his tweets and posts, relentlessly.

Now, we are seeing some evidence that the exuberance may be tapering off.

In the Silicon Valley, early stage seed funding is already beginning to soften, according to CB Insights newsletter this morning.

The big question really is – in a year when India’s nascent startup ecosystem is expected to see more first time failed entrepreneurs, are we celebrating the right kind of role models?

Without taking anything away from the grand success achieved by the likes of Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Bahl, Agarwal and several other poster boys of Indian startup dreams, perhaps it’s time to identify some long-ignored role models.

Celebrating Real Heroes

Living in the shadows of some of the most savvy and hugely funded ecommerce entrepreneurs, a bunch of founders have been quietly building their startups focused more on solving some of the toughest enterprise problems.

Some like Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu are such nonconformists that they have shunned venture capital money for over a decade, doggedly building a globally successful enterprise software business.

Vembu and several others usually stay away from media glare, building their companies and fighting real battles. It’s almost like a parallel world.

It’s so unsexy to even talk of bootstrapping now. Startup founders are even hiring PR agencies that send regular, speculative press releases on their upcoming funding rounds.

The year 2016 is going to be about financial discipline and hacking solutions for problems that actually serve real needs, and are valuable enough for users to pay for.

If you are a wannabe entrepreneur about to quit your cushy job, or a first time failed founder looking to not give up and build the next big thing, here are some role models who you may want to learn from. And if you are a just-born entrepreneur like me, nothing like starting off by learning from these real heroes to ensure you keep it real.

Here are some founders you may want to emulate, meet and learn from this year. I am not even describing them, or getting into the details of why I picked them. It’s almost like institutionalising awards, and that’s something we can do without. So, don’t ask me if there’s any scientific or intelligent model based on which I picked these real heroes. Just go, learn from them and their journeys if you feel like.

And please do add to this list, we desperately need more of them.

• Manav Garg of Eka Software
• Sridhar Vembu of Zoho
• Santosh Panda of Explara
• Kaushal Dugar of Teabox
• Muddu Sudhakar, a serial enterprise software entrepreneur who keeps finding new niches, exiting the startups every few years
• Murthy Chintalapati of Ozonetel
• Phanindra Sama – remember Redbus?
• Jaspreet Singh of Druva Software
• Rajiv Chilaka of Green Gold Animation (creator of Indian animation hero, Chhota Bheem)
• Girish Mathrubootham of Freshdesk
• Manish Sharma of Printo