When Americans think of the Indian technology sector, they still perceive a nation of call center workers and low-level computer programmers administering databases and updating websites. But while the West was sleeping, Indian IT morphed into a giant R&D machine. Indian companies that started out doing call center and low-level IT work have climbed the value chain to become outsourced providers of critical R&D in sophisticated areas such as semiconductor design, aerospace, automotive, network equipment and medical devices.
This is happening as multi-nationals set up their own R&D operations in India and partner with local shops. Both the Palm Pre smart phone and the Amazon Kindle, two of the hottest consumer electronics devices on the market, have key components designed in India. Intel designed its six-core Xeon processor in India. IBM has over 100,000 employees in India. A large number of these are building Big Blue’s most sophisticated software products. Cisco is developing cutting edge networking technologies for futuristic “intelligent cities” in Bangalore. Adobe, Cadence, Oracle, Microsoft and most of the large software companies are developing mainstream products in India.
Equally important are the arrival of Indian multi-nationals who are tackling global markets, such as Tata with its dirt cheap Nano car that the company is now positioning for a European market entry and Reva, which recently announced it was planning to build an electric car factory in New York state to address the U.S. market for electric vehicles.
What has been missing to date in India, however, is early stage venture activity and the type of grass-roots entrepreneurism that is the hallmark of American capitalism and Silicon Valley. In that respect China is way ahead of India with many startups taking advantage of huge government incentives and reeling in talented native Chinese returnees to serve as CEOs and CTOs. Note that Kaifu Lee, formerly Google’s top guy in China, was able to launch a $100 million startup incubator focusing entirely on the mobile sector — and he was flooded with business plans within days of opening his doors in the Middle Kingdom.
On my recent trip to India I started to see new signs of life in tech entrepreneurship. Many of the startups that Sarah Lacy and I met were really smart and hungry. Some were even doing things better than their Silicon Valley counterparts. Not all of these startups are developing breakthrough technologies but many of them are solving problems that U.S. companies have thus far failed to solve and doing it with fewer resources.
One of the most interesting companies I met is in the mundane business of developing offset printer ink. Their ink is made from vegetable oil and is entirely bio-degradable. The offset printing industry consumes 1 million tons of petroleum products and emits 500,000 tons of volatile organic compounds every year. An IIT-Delhi incubated startup called EnNatura developed a printing ink which emits no volatile compounds and is washable. And the overall cost of their solution will be significantly less than all present compounds when produced at scale. I can see a company like this growing into a billion dollar global business.
Another interesting company was LiveMedia. This is an out-of-home advertising company that has 4,500 screens in 2,200 destinations with a total reach of 50 million people. Of course, you can find exactly these sorts of TV screens in thousands of places across the U.S. Unfortunately, it has been very hard to make real money selling advertising on these networks. LiveMedia appears to have cracked that by creating specialized content that is more engaging and interactive than a box droning CNN or the Disney Channel. LiveMedia content includes games, quizzes, horoscopes, a few short animations, and other content that is both cheap to produce and easy to play along with or understand. LiveMedia has also perfected context-relevant advertising spots keyed to the crowds at the screen location.
LiveMedia is in the process of building out a partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs India that would give the network even more interactive capabilities. Bell Labs has developed a content management and routing system, dubbed Mango, that makes it much easier and efficient to deliver high-bandwidth, high-quality video and interactive content over existing networks. In the developing world, everyone wants a TiVO-like capability to share, store and manage content. But existing GPRS or EDGE-based cell networks are not up to snuff. And the broadband infrastructure still lags behind that of the most developed telecom networks in places like Japan, Korea and Scandanavia. A product like Mango is tailor-made for VC investment to get it out of the lab and into a spin-off company.
This is partly why so many U.S. venture capital shops have opened up branches in India. In fact, the two lead investors in LiveMedia are both U.S. venture capitalists including the respected Valley firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. But India lags in home-grown venture capital activity. As I have previously discussed, VCs follow the innovation. So the lack of native VC in India is notable in that it implies a critical mass of activity remains lacking, as well.
For example, in the first nine months of 2008, total early stage VC investments in India totaled $678 million, according to the Global India Venture Capital Association. In the U.S. over that same period early stage investments tallied $5.2 billion according to the U.S. National Venture Capital Association – and that number is not entirely reflective of the real situation. The economic downturn hit the U.S. much harder than the Subcontinent and VC activity in the U.S. fell faster and harder. Regardless, a 10-fold difference between early stage venture activity clearly illustrates the capital is not there yet.
So when will there be enough innovative startups to support an explosion in venture capital? I’d argue, sooner than you realize. During my week in India I spoke to close to 100 startups. A few of them had products or prototypes that would easily compete in Silicon Valley. Some of the leading lights of the legacy Indian IT giants are also moving quickly into VC. Infosys founder Narayan Murthy recently sold millions of dollars of shares in the company in order to launch a venture capital fund targeting investments in India.
The dynamics of entrepreneurship are the same in India as in America. Company founders usually come from the ranks of experienced business executives and are middle-aged. They get tired of working for others and want to make an impact and build wealth before they get too old. Given that there are now hundreds of thousands of R&D workers in India who are gaining valuable experience and are getting old, it is simply a matter of time before they begin to hatch their entrepreneurial plans. After all, their colleagues who migrated to the U.S. now start nearly one in six of Silicon Valley’s tech firms.
I’ll bet that in 5 years, if you stacked up a TechCrunch 50 of Indian start ups versus a comparable number of U.S. startups, it would be a pretty even match. That’s pretty amazing considering the relatively short length of time that the Indian startup scene has existed. And it’s a good lesson for America that the barriers to starting a company are lower than ever before—and some ambitious engineer in India will eat your lunch if you don’t get your prototype built and perfected ASAP.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
with the kind of governments and infrastructure we have here?
could be possible because people are talented and they are already managing it without any help from the government. overall situation still sucks.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic who does not know what he is writing and also just another Anu Shukla.
ROFLMAO!
haha that’s hilarious, I took so long to read through the entire article and to see this comment here is really funny. lol
Infrastructure is what is holding India back the most.
Oh Please! Infrastructure is hardly a problem for those used to generations of workarounds, even though these workarounds, well…work, only in the short term. Western infrastructure is built on the model of easy availability of energy to build and to maintain. We don’t have energy so we’re not going to get infrastructure in a hurry.
Our problem is that we are, culturally, opinionated to a fault, and lack ingenuity to come up with anything more than the aforesaid workaround to a short term solution, or skim the surface of a subject, create much hoohah around it, and then get just 35% the distance and compromise. Look at the movies, a lot of the ‘hits’ are superficial, have no real character, or are simply ‘innovative’ versions of stories told elsewhere. There are awesome exceptions of course, and thank god for them.
What you call as Indian R&D is hardly R&D, or barely Indian. Even Cisco’s intelligent cities ideas are probably being run/ developed from multiple locations.
Printing Ink? Out of Home advertising? Mango? You consider these as worthwhile examples of high tech entrepreneurship? Let’s get one thing right. To run a successful development venture, you have to do one of these two – affect a lot of people with your product or service, OR what you are doing has to be sufficiently advanced so that it seems like magic (which means it could also be artistic).
Before we do any R&D we should have the public/ collective/ people will to go do things out of our skins, because we really need to do it to survive. We havent had to bring nature to its knees because if is kind to us, so we never needed to do much for our survival back in the harappa days.
Not much has changed since then.
Only if you have started a startup in India, you would know the problems. In US people don’t know what is power cut, people can use basic home internet connection to start with, a few customers here are enough to support their expenses, real estate space is comparable to pricing of there products.. which is simply not the case in India..
Even if you pay $100 a month you can’t reliable Internet in India in cities like Hyderabad. The cost of descent work space for 8 people can cost you anywhere between $600 to $1000..
UPS costs too are higher.
Hardware is 20% expensive than in US.
Loans are 30% expensive than here.
Products sold locally gives peanuts. If one doesn’t have presence in West revenues and expense dont match until its scaled up enough..
Only advantage India has comparatively is cost of Human Resources..
@wizardofid , yes infrastructure is indeed a major problem in India, Recently in a TED Event in India, Pranav Mistry Inventor of SixthSense – ‘a wearable device’ which actually filled the gap b/w digital devices and physical world convinced the fact that its actually the place like MIT where he fulfilled his dreams and earlier he was in IIT Mumbai. Now thats where infra issues crop-up.
For most of the high-tech startups/ products entrepreneurs cannot single-handedly manipulate the things in India and not even team of 8-10 people.
And India do have people with lot sophisticated R&D capabilities all they need is independent environment and infrastructure, let me put it this way – can you thought of Irrigation without water or building a home on loose-sand if you dont have much accessibility to get raw-materials.
In, India what’s easiest thing to do is to make one e-commerce portal (makemytrip.com, yatra.com) with revenue coming-in from Ads, Sponsors & affiliates. And i dont think its that much high-tech, you will get readymade e-commerce portal on any CMS like WordPress or Drupal.
Mr.Vivek, We need to differentiate what sort of Infrastructure. India still has a large/Growing Agrarian,Industrial and Knowledge based economy.Sure, we need to improve a lot w.r.t the Physical Infrastructure needed for the Agrarian and Industrial sectors (e.g. Power,Roads mainly),But we have progressed quite a lot in terms of the infrastructure needed for the Knowledge based economy.(Internet/Mobile), India is one of the fastest growing Telecom sector in the World.In a globalised knowledge based economy,the context and barriers of the associated infrastructure could be less. For instance, I know of a small IT company in India running their entire Media business/ services on a cloud computing platform in the US for US clients that needs 500 MBPS bandwidth,while they control it with a 2MBPS bandwidth, so Infrastructure is a relative term here…and it depends on how one harnesses the global potential inspite of the local challenges….
i am trying to think of one innovative product that came out of India. Not an incremental improvement but a paradigm shift.
I can’t think of one — I can just think of hardware/software that was done cheaper.
I hate to say it but my experience in working in India is that most of the thinking is around how to work around a non-existent infrastructure or how to get 2 cents of work with just 1 cent of money and not on big, paradigm shifting things like Google Search or the iPhone.
“i am trying to think of one innovative product that came out of India.”
Tandoori chicken! mm, mm, mm…
Tata Nano car which was built from Iron Ore to finish (just to remain under $2000) n make a dream come true for millions. U guys suck.
Now name a 2nd innovation to come out of India.
I can cite some… Tejas Networks; Tata EKA; CDAT Param Padma etc. There are many more dude, stop being ignorant. Google if you don’t know what they are…
Sachin Tendulkar ???
Sachin Tendulkar ???
@Puranjay: We have no eCommerce scene
really? here at least three examples that I know of:
1. http://www.makemytrip.com/
2. http://irctc.co.in/
The number of trips taken annually in the Indian Railways system equates to the entire population of the whole world taking at least 1 trip by train. The site gets 1.3-1.5 million enquiries and several thousand bookings daily
3. http://www.sulekha.com/
Closed-cycle, thorium nuclear power. India is way ahead of everyone else in this technology. Currently in pilot, when this goes live & commercial, it will make uranium largely irrelevant. Not to mention that the Indian design can use as fuel the plutonium from those utterly useless warheads.
The Reva electric car out of Bengaluru which has sold the highest number of mass produced electric cars in the world. The latest models, NXR and NXG ………
http://www.zerc...XR-and-NXG.html
… will now be produced (by licence) in the U.S. and Finland.
The Reva electric car built in Bengaluru. The latest models, REVA NXR and NXG will be built – under licence- in the USA and Finland. A new production line of 30,000 units is currently under construction in India.
Antrix Corp., wholly owned by ISRO (Indian Space & Research Organisation) is launching satellites for a global client base at a price that is 60-75% of the price offered by the closest competitor.
It has a current order backlog of 1.5 yrs and has successfully put into orbit more than 20 satellites for international customers.
Since 1994, India’s IRS satellite constellation has been the principal source of satellite imagery for EOStat (The Earth Observation Satellite Co., USA)
Article: The Earth Observation Satellite Co. (EOSAT). (marketing agreement with India’s National Remote Sensing Agency) (Satellite Circuit)
Article from: Satellite News
Article date: November 8, 1993
The Earth Observation Satellite Co. (EOSAT), a joint Hughes-Martin Marietta venture that gathers and sells remote sensing data, has cut a marketing deal with India’s National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA). The agreement, inked Oct. 21 at the International Astronautical Federation Congress in Graz, Austria, was announced Oct. 28 by EOSAT President Arturo Silvestrini
Interesting aside: According to a British publication, Indian satellites were deployed to calculate blind spots in American satellite trajectories and thereby prevent them from detecting preparations for India’s May 1998 nuclear tests.
// Now name a 2nd innovation to come out of India
Zoho (Online Office Suite) is a world class innovation from India
You did hear that one of these “inventions” exploded?
Yes, I also heard about exploding space shuttles & the financial meltdown.
I also heard of the Columbia space shuttle.
owned
Bose, Google BOSE for more information
Why don’t *you* google Bose?
He was born and raised in the US. I am proud when a person of Indian origin achieves success in the US – but it’s pitiful when we act like it’s some credit to India. If anything, it’s proof to the contrary.
Again, the question – a very valid one at that – was, what innovative product *came out of* India? As in, “which product was started and developed and marketed and grown by someone – even an American – *in* India?”
Because, *that* would be the proof of the capability of the system (technology, political, economical, social, .. etc) in India to foster innovation – in products, startups and technology.
hell yea
For your records – Hotmail’s creator was a Indian.
Hotmail’s creators (Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith) created Hotmail in the US. Sabeer’s being Indian has nothing to do with it.
I totally agree with you. And Vivek Wadhwa says ” Cisco is developing cutting edge networking technologies for futuristic “intelligent cities” in Bangalore.” He has no clue or he is being a cheerleader for some reason – I have lived in Bangalore many years and it is neither a futuristic intelligent city or nor a city filled with innovators.
The recent articles by Vivek Wadhwa bragging about India are beginning to look silly.
Obviously you don’t read the news. He is talking about the “intellegent cities” that Cisco is developing for Dubai and Saudi. There are no intellegent cities in India or America. There is little intellegence in your comments also.
He has admitted it..He writes here so people come to bash India, get the scene heated up and manage a few hundred followers to his Twitter account..
Anand, for someone who purports to have a respectable business in publishing statistics, that is a surprisingly ignorant and disrespectful comment. What’s wrong?
I’m really disappointed with your tweet sometime back about writing about India because of the rush of comments that follows..
Shankar, go learn some English. Cisco is developing stuff for intelligent cities in Bangalore apparently. I mean, you’re interpretation is off logically. Did you not realize there’s an “cities in Bangalore” in there? Obviously it’s illogical to have a city within a city.
But you’re right. Vivek, if you really like these third world countries like India or Chile so much, go back. No one’s going to miss you in American academia.
Ha! Who are you to speak on behalf of American academia. Your terminology is out of date, pick up a book. The proper term is Developing countries not Third World countries, fool.
Cisco is developing “intelligent cities” for the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Do a Google on this for details.
John Devour: “Shankar, go learn some English.”
John Devour: “Did you not realize there’s an “cities in Bangalore” in there? ”
===========
Me: The irony…
English is a good point. If one is an english only speaker, his or her socio economic, political and scientific world view will be limited by what is expressed and available in the english language. For example, everyone thinks Facebook is an american invention. Even before Facebook existed the Koreans and Chinese had facebook like applications called QQ and Cyworld. Will leave the debate on who copied who open for now. Language is a big barrier for disemmniation of knowledge and awareness. To take another example. The folks pushing lunch boxes in Mumbai for years have been using a process based on a coding system which has been more accurate than GE’s 6 sigma processes. In other words a box sent from one point in the city to another may change a 100 hands in a day but the error in one single box getting lost is less than one in a million. And almost a million boxes are in circulation every day. Until some english speaking prof calls it six sigma, writes a case study, teaches it in an Ivy league, or probably writes a book that sells on Amazon, the english speaking world will be ignorant of practices are that seemingly new to one world but stale in the other. Unless people cross their language and cultural boundaries they will never know what they dont know. An avurvedic practitioner will probably pinch a nerve ending on the back of a patient suffering a headache in India or advice to chew on a leaf, where as in the US, it may be common practice to pump the body with ibubrufen. One rarely gets to read the former in English.
Indians have crossed their barrier to english reasonably well. Why dont english speakers try the Indian part -then make exclamations on language. Try Sanskrit for a start. Learning some english can only take us thus far. chinese, japanese and sanskrit may open many other worlds for the native english speaker beyond yumcha, sashimi and yoga.
+1
Hotmail.com
Hotmail was developed in America with American Venture Capital money. The only “Indian” thing about Hotmail was it’s co-founder (who worked on Hotmail on American company time btw).
So what matters more? The brain behind the product or the banker?
Are you really naive or deliberately being dense?
The question is how many entrepreneurs succeed in India vs. the US.
Not Indians vs. Americans!
Didn’t we already agree on the fact that Infrastructure is holding India back…
If the schooling, nationality of the founder is only incidental and venture capital is all that matters, we need to rethink about who’s being naive here.
your reply to Prof Wadhwa was plain lame !!!!!
I’m really disappointed with your tweet sometime back about writing about India because of the rush of comments that follows..
i mean doood, WTF ! Live up to what your parents taught you and just apologise!
Anand,
“India is morphing into a global R&D hub, but can it ever take on Silicon Valley?”
That’s the question that the article asks. That’s what I’m responding to.
You’re just changing the question itself to suit your answers.
I am proud when a person of Indian origin achieves success in the US – but it’s pitiful when we act like it’s
some credit to the >ecosystem for entrepreneursin India<.
If anything, it’s glaring proof to the contrary that the only major successes in hi-tech of Indian entrepreneurs
(or of entrepreneurs Indian origin) are outside India, a vast majority of them in the US, and an exceedingly
large number of them in the Silicon Valley.
Again, the question – a very valid one at that – that we both responded to was:
"what innovative product *came out of* India?" As in, “which product was started and developed and marketed and
grown by someone – even an American – *in* India?”
Because, *that* would be the proof of the capability of the ecosystem (technology, political, economical,
social, .. etc) in India to foster innovation *and* entrepreneurship – in technology, products and startups.
Oye! Pranav Mistry is Indian.
Retards, he is going to change the world. A black swan! Now stop stereotyping. Not ALL American women are sluts, if you no what I mean.
Oye! Pranav Mistry is Indian.
Retards, he is going to change the world. A black swan! Now stop stereotyping. Not ALL American women are sluts, if you know what I mean.
@tim
“As many as 12% scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in NASA, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians.
If that’s not proof enough of Indian scientific and corporate prowess, digest this: 34% employees at Microsoft, 28% at IBM, 17% at Intel and 13% at Xerox are Indians.
And the House of Elders also heard some startling facts about a country that’s still stuck with a Third World tag — 20% of gold in the world is used by Indians and nine out of 10 diamonds used in the world are made in India.”
If this people start going back to India (which many of them are due to bad economy, weak dollar, more opportunities in India), they can give tough competition to companies here. India still has world’s one of the most powerful resource, brainpower. Thats why we need them. Never underestimate anyone. I am from US and love it, but US does not make up the world.
Dude, they are not Indians, They all are American citizens, Persons of Indian Origin.
India will better itself the second when we lose this ‘inferiority’ complex / copy with ‘cool world’ called west. Here corruption is result of Greed, but we’ve learnt to work more, to survive in these dire conditions, and earn and feed, while the ‘greed’ in USA has turned not only the strong middle class upside down, but shown how irresponsible they can be since it affected the whole world. They did prove the world depends on the states, since it not only affected jobs in India and other developing countries, but also countries like Iceland. Its so ‘cool’ to eat the junk of KFC or hangout in bars, go to gf swapping parties that has been inexistant in India, but uncool to see a puddle of water in middle of road that affects many, eg the first scene in 2012 movie. Our backs were bent from the midieval ages under kings, then the unknown colonists, now the politicians.
If all the Indians care is their paltry salary for the huge contributions they make in their work, so it can ‘feed’ their family, and not care about the environment, or do something to the ‘it happens only in movies’ politics, I’m sure its just a passing ‘feel-good’ before the other competitors in the ‘outsourcing’ industry eat up India’s shares, and the supposidly strong middle class breaks up, and becomes 70s again.
I am in Bangalore, but I am sorry to say, from the minute I landed here, all I see are the trees cut down in the name of infrastructure development, and the beautiful garden cit being raped by millions of cars/bikers’ smoke. I couldn’t stand a minute without coughing. Its still shoking that all the ‘go-green’ wannabes in Bangalore fail to understand that it was because of the unintelligent and money caring politicians that gave permission to set up IT companies, in such a huge amounts, inside the city but to expand it linearly.
Its just pity while Indians can say ‘%’ of ppl in Nasa are India, % of docs in America are Indians. Get a grip, they went because they ditched India, can’t stand the country. We celebrated when the American woman of Indian origin jogged in space while she aint Indian at all. How many times have you seen boards/even americans who say ‘Bill Gates’ is the pride of States, or “steve jobs’ or whoever. How many times???? none…. they were intelligent managers who built a strong empire. Half the american IT don’t even like to work in Windows but linux, and they started the ‘open-source’ and other culture-bending ideas.
Before any R & D or innovation or whatever happens in India, all ye commentators please think for a while how many times you’ve challanged your higher authority, be it your Project Manager or your head-doctor, because they are doing a crappy job,?? None?? Yeah, the backside-kissing nature will never leave.
Also, when my friend left his job because he felt it was so freaking dumb managers’ ideas he had to implement, he went two months without salary and all he was made fun of was ‘he is a parasite under his father’s family, he is a nobody, a waste’ and he went on to start his company with a bank loan (after some gift-lending to officials, of course), and its making some 2-3 lakh a month now, and the ‘cool’ IT pros who made fun of him are still struck with their 1000$/month(40k Rs) jobs, still partying on the ugly pubs thinkng they are ‘livin their lives’, while riding back home drunk, and over roads filled with potholes and mud. Unless the basic underlining of Indian thinking changes, only God should help India.
In these lines, I worship American attitude, the ideas, the dream, and ability to stand against the tide. Almost all of the management books were from western authors because they ‘learnt’ and ‘tweaked’ and ‘created’ new ideas to make things better, not just implement what the ‘tradition’ has to say.
instead of following the west in the junk of KFC or McDonalds, if we can load a bit of their attidude in life(I know the zero-size dress, and plastic culture also started in US, but I am talking about the big picture), I think India can easily improve, since its an ocean of ‘gasolene’(petrol) waiting to burn down the infections, and not a dune in a desert that has no ability to change anything like it’s BIG neighbors.
I am a hyper-patriot of India, or mankind, and just get annoyed of the mis-informed ppl making juvenile comments. Mr.Vadhwa here is trying to say something to US government about how the companies, even if they are bullied by the govt over the H1b are spreading their wings toward other places on earth with intelligent working class and without managerial abilities, he’s trying to say something to US ppl, to Indias. Try to understand, and you’d go a long way of seeing the bigger picture
+10
tht ws long…so what were u saying
change your attitude in stuff that matters, have faith in your country, and work towards achieving something and give it all, even if that means a low-cost food on the table!!
Dude, don’t believe those lame e-mail forwards.
I am from India and I am started to get annoyed with these silly articles. Dude, India is corrupt and infrastructure is primitive. Things get done at a snail’s pace and although it is a lot better than the Soviet/Indira Gandhi days of pseudo-communism, it is still far behind the States in terms of innovation and light years behind China in terms of infrastructure.
ok u left india long back and u want to feel u did the right move, apparently u dint. India is now a much better place.
ha ha….that reply was priceless!
@Mohit,
Peace.
Each and every country in the world is corrupt. I urge you to join a government organization instead of some hi-tech software company; do your work sincerely and not take bribes. Ok? If each and everyone does their part properly instead of trolling in some random technology blog comment boards, we will make it to the top
son, mohit. what a sorry picture you present.
Son of a duck u are..
Let me clear my throat…brain..fingers. here we go:
A.) I go to India a lot. I can’t think of a six month period in the last two years that have passed without a trip there.
B.) I have a great time and find it at least as fun or sometimes more so than the States. Hindrances are local police asking my friends who own bars for Rs. 25,000 (~$550) to keep the place open for an extra hour and a half on Friday/Saturday nights – annoying corruption.
C.) K-12 education is designed to stifle creativity – although the private school system inherited from the British Raj is a lot better than most public and private schools worldwide, by the time most kids get to their non-IIT/IIM institutions, they have been programmed to fall within a certain cookie cutter mold to service either Electrical, Mechanical, Computer Engineering or BPO needs. The current programs combine mediocrity and volume to create armies of tech support workers. Design engineering, Industrial engineering, Information Systems, Graphic Design, and anything remotely combining creativity with process structures is only being taken seriously now. If you disagree, why are so many Desis coming to the States or Australia for these degrees? This also has to do with my next point…
D.) Quotas – schedule cast/schedule tribe – this is 2009 and it is affirmative action on crack. A country of >1 billion needs the political will to get rid of this antiquated apologist system and replace it with a meritocracy. Students believe their life is over if they can’t meet the expectations set by their parents and teachers. Estimates for 10th grade suicides are between 3000-4000 each year. Quotas need to go.
E.) Commercial loans are expensive. With no government support, interest rates at ~15% from most banks are an instant bottleneck to small business innovation.
F.) @Chaitanya, TechCrunch is not a “random technology blog”, especially with the addition of Paul Carr’s op-eds. I consider it a better source for construing the progress of societal movement (with technology) than the NYTimes, Huffington Post, and definitely the Times of India. I am not trolling, but am painting an accurate picture of what I see as the ugly truth.
Your humble servant…
G.) Security – 7 terrorist attacks in Mumbai since 2001. Foreigners and NRIs can never feel secure because the laziness and corruption of local forces don’t allow for the basic framework.
Corruption, where my points were lacking – police in Mumbai had spent more money on new cars and promotions for their officers than basic training for their forces, Sharad Pawar’s net worth is ~2500 crores, Chidambaram’s son owns hundreds of hectares near the new airport in Panvel, and you will never see this in the news because relatively, the cheapest commodity in India is the media’s megaphone, especially the off button.
There are a tremendous number of products which have come out of India which are embedded in technologies in common use. In most cases, the patents are owned by US companies and you don’t read about the individual contributions. It will be a few years before these inventors start developing equal technologies for the West.
In one year I’ve seen many startups popping up in Pune. The ecosystem is getting in 1st gear. Though it sucks 95% as most of them are just not-so-original ideas. But why not look at those 5%?
What are these products? Why don’t you list them?
May be because, vultures race to get patents for those ideas. Just like, trying to patent Yoga, Neem related products etc..
Obviously they were Indian, but vultures don’t care.
You’re right, Vivek. Please don’t get distracted by these naysayers.
Vivek, I would like you to check out companies like Tejas Networks, OnMobile, CDAC, TATA Super Computing Labs, IISc incubated companies in Bangalore, Flipkart, Myntra, Zoho etc.
@OM – Yeah the overall infrastructure is not upto great standards but it’s rapidly improving.
It’s no wonder that all product MNC’s have offshore R & D centers as it works effectively from the cost & talent pool perspective.
improving? what they are building today is barely managing to survive the population we have today. delhi metro is overcrowded today. whats going to happen in 10-15 years? roads? mumbai and delhi are both messed up traffic wise. power? 12 hours power cuts here in gurgaon. safe drinking water? in my dreams.
politicians? apparently they somehow manage to get caught when they foolishly try to deposit black money in banks!
there are indeed some great startups and IT companies which are doing something innovative. i am a big fan of web18 team (bookmyshow? rocks!).
the biggest IT companies in india? i guess outsourcing is all what they care about. or maybe government projects now (infosys for example).
Completely agree with you om. On Infrastructure and other basic need wise we suck. Also I see you are trying to refer to Koda.
The amount of money he had is phenomenal. Also the fact that we are witnessing lot of migration to urban areas is not helping our cause. At least in case of Mumbai, BMC does a decent job in road repairs and expansion year on year. However Mumbai is getting to congested with growing migrants. Hopefully Metro and other form of fast transport could help. That brings us to politicians and lack of accountability which ensures that Metro which was suppose to arrive by 2012 is not shifted to 2015. Probably by 2020 ?.
Guys,
Let’ stop cribbing about what is not good in India, we do have enormous potential, challenges and opportunities.
The quality of infrastructure, growth are dependent on the economic opportunities & potential so it’s no wonder that everytime we build something like metro’s & highways they are getting over crowded in less than a year or two but that doesn’t mean we suck or government sucks – it just that the growth is imploding so is the creation of new infrastructure facilities in future.
Also quality of startups from India etc is over debated topic than anything else here in TC. The quality & success are not factors of our thinking, culture or approach towards life but it’s the maturity of ecosystem. Look back at 1970 & 1980’s – ask your parents & grandparents on what India was and what it is now?. I am very optimistic about the potential outcomes from our country – let’s stop cribbing and start building something valuable for the world.
According to an interview with the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2005, “we need an investment of about USD 150 billion in the next seven or eight years to realize our ambition to provide our country with an infrastructure which is equal to the economic and social challenges that we face”
So? He said that India needs to. Not that it will. India should also invest in people who speak English.
I didn’t get it. You are being ambiguous. You may need a book on how to say it clearly and concisely!
Well said.
The Delhi-Jaipur highway is a classic example. The idiots built a 4 lane (2 lanes on each side) highway that was overcrowded within an year. Today, a distance of 280 kms sometimes takes as much as 7 hours in a bus, 5-6 hours in a car at moderate speeds. What they built was good enough only for an year.
The India internet figures seem even more depressing. I won’t even talk about the lack of internet speed and bandwidth limitations. We have no eCommerce scene, our broadband subscribers number below 5 million, and our internet companies have come up with nothing new in the past 10 years.
Vivek, I admire your enthusiasm about technology in developing countries, but I think its also important to wake up and smell the coffee at times.
Its funny that people who actually live in India are not at all bearish about its tech scene, while those who have spent a better part of their adult lives in the US, are..
bullish you mean?
I am an Indian working in Mumbai/India. Have worked with two VC funded startups and let me tell you it’s a long way before India startups can have kind of impact their US counterparts have. We are still obsessed with services and low hanging fruits like BPO etc. In 5 years yes things would change for better but not at the scale Mr. Vivek predicts. I think US will still be the leader because it’s labs still remain the cradle of innovation.
Well said. Though there are some Indian developers that are talented, America remains the hotbed of research in nearly every field.
John – pls take a look at the US PTO website. Compare the data of new patents awarded to countries. There needs to be some common framework before we compare countries… US gained its independance on July 4, 1776. India on August 15th 1947 – a gap of some 180 years. other things being equal – both being democracies and capitalistic – India will probably need one forth the time it took the US to reach its current supremacy. Life expectancy in the US in the 1900s was 45 years, India’s today is 67. more children died before the age of 5 in the US than in India in the 1970s. Rural electrification in the US was completed in 1950s. Electricity was invented in 1873. India still has villages without electricity. Take every aspect of society you will see these trends… take the rights of african americans…compare that to India’s casteism. We all like to forget our pasts – voting rights for african americans came in 1960s, Aparthied was prevalent in South Africa until late 90s. India is also trying to forget its past and I guess most Indians in the forum are trying to look forward and I think if you are an American you must do the same – our pasts are dreadful.
Ankur, it is clear that you have had some bad experiences, but this doesn’t mean that every company in the country is as bad as the two that you say you have worked for. There are many bad companies all over the world.
Let’s see what happens over time. I believe my predictions will come true.
Background : I am an Indian. I have worked for a Tier I consulting firm across North America, Europe and India. I am quitting my job in the next few months to launch a product I believe in.
I fundamentally agree and disagree with this article. As some commentator posted above, India has a completely different ecosystem, be it social, cultural, economic or scientific. We are still fixing our basic survival problems as we evolve rapidly, be it Infrastructure or human capital or just a general socio-economic outlook. There maybe a few millions who have solved the crisis of two meals a day for good, but there is still one third of a billion who have to cross the education and basic needs bridge. Maybe it will take 5 years, mayb it will take 10 years, its difficult to predict, but its an inevitability. Why? Because the survival instincts that is ingrained in our blood, will everge and overcome the current problems as well.
During the Dotcom era, technology was a key industry where you could do really well for yourself, and if you were the typical middle class, it was a short circuit path to success ( money, fame , foreign education for future generations etc.). So a lot of Indian middle class ‘Techies’ picked up this profession because it was probably the easiest path to fast track success( now please don’t view success from the american eye here please). The survival insticnt at hand again. If US did not exist and China was a hub probably we would be masters at Mandarin by now.
If you see, the Apples, the Googles , the Microsofts and the Facebooks were opened by youngsters, and they were first generation success stories. Compare this with Indian youngsters a decade back. Technology was just an option. Today’s youth is different. I was at Proto this year, a premier startup event of India, and the overwhelming feeling that i had was the ‘it’ crowd is slowly getting very disllusioned with the brain dead work that the Indian IT Consulting companies are doling out. They don’t want to do mindless support work anymore. They don’t want to clean Westerners’ shit all the time. They want to beat the mediocre path and take a different trajectory.
Come to think of it, If you look at Entreprenuership overall, Bharti , Reliance are excellent success stories too. Only that they are not ‘technie’ enough? Today’s restless youth have the option of quitting their jobs , renting out a garage and do something they believe in, and not just follow a beaten path, because, they can leverage their friends and family and burgeoning middle class. The risk has lessened, getting back to the mainstream is not that difficult. India has a population of close to half a billion, once the rural community are empowered enough to spend, will we keep chasing the next american client?
My Take: India won’t ever have a Silicon Valley of its own. India will create a new ecosystem which will be fundamentally different and disperate from the Silicon Valley, a complex mesh of VCs , Angels and entrepreneurs and consumers across different cities. A large chunk of Americans think that a success story back in U.S is more or less a global success story. Its a matter of time when an Indian company starts thinking in that fashion too. And if you post the numbers to prove that, who can question money.
Prof Wadhwa, you mean well but I wish you had gone into more statistical details and covered more startups.
Very Well said.
Gud post.Even though the talent pool here have that capability but still taking over silicon valley still remains a distant dream due to the following reasons.
1) Lack of govt support.
2)universities not moving in that direction.
3) companies not showing interest in R&D but focus is entirely is on services.
What india can do
1) govt invest more on R&D at organizations like HAL.
2)universities start seing computers as field for Ph d’s.
3)students from IIT’s stop fleeing to US & Europe.
4) Techies desiring to built next generation Google,Facebbok in india.
5)Needs more investors,seed funders.
Agree with you largely, but two points:
1. Reg. your IITians fleeing, we need to get over this brand obsession. IITians are not the only flag-bearers. I am not demeaning their achievements or intellect, but in the media hype over the IIT/IIM thingy, people from other institutions never get the limelight they deserve – a very important reason why some startups fold up
2. Indians may aspire to build the next Google, but not the next Facebook/Twitter. We are already cash-strapped.. We shouldn’t/can’t build products that have no business model. Cash flow needs to be positive from day one..
I think landgrabbing as startup model has started in India too. Look at for example #apalya.
This guy wud flee to States the day he gets his passport. N curse the ones returning to India if the expatriate goes jobless in recession.
no this guy ws already chased down from the US by Mr W…one upppppp :p
Excuse me Mr. Jags. “fleeing to US & Europe”…?? OK, lemme clear out some facts for you, sir. During the past 7 years, there have been an umpteen number of startups by IITians. I knoiw coz i’ve been seeing them right on our campus here, incubated by the intitute. The first one I remember was Minekey (u can google) and then came up the e-cell (for entrepreneur cell). and now.. half my batchmates have already started a company/companies or are readying out a b-plan. Frankly, nobody wants to flee. Please stop looking at us as though we are eating up ur share of the meal. And yaa.. I agree some guys currently do leave.. but to pursue Ph.Ds. But then again, in the last 4 yrs, I have seen 12 professors, all alumni of our institute, returning to teach here.
so long as india ignores its human rights problems it will never flourish as an innovation center. india is plagued with child slavery, arranged marriage, and many other serious human rights violations. it’s a whitewash to even entertain india being the next silicon valley.
lol … dude arranged marriage is pretty much a way of life here and it’s isn’t forced marriage … ppl choose amongst many with consent of their parents. No wonder we have the low divorce rates. Indian recored on human rights is pretty decent vis a vi another countries. Request you to take into account our population, no of religions practiced, and it’s history.
The divorce rates are low not because the couples are happy, but because:
1. They don’t want to disappoint their parents by getting divorced.
2. The woman usually doesn’t have an independent income to actually think of divorcing
3. They are scared of the social stigma.
Divorce is a sociological phenomenon, not a statistical one. Back up your claims with proof from sociology, not statistics.
But it works. India does not produce bastard children who go on to produce more bastard children with everyone sleeping with everyone’s kin making more bastard progeny.
I’d take corruption and dearth of human rights any day than my neighbor banging my wife and my neighbors 13 year old daughter sucking dick in a parking lot somewhere.
What has the western world achieved since civilization began. Creature comforts and the desire for more wealth.
Human rights and self dignity begins with a family. When it comes to this, the west is far behind India. A broken family is a testament to a broken nation. To that, India is a rich nation.
The rest of the ills we see, will be cured as time goes by. Changes do not happen overnight.
You have a point here.
Yep. Forcing people to marry someone they don’t like. Discriminating people based on caste and creed. Honor killings if they date or don’t marry. Yep, India is a rich country indeed. I’m half Indian. My dad was ostracized by his Indian family for marrying a white woman.
@John
I wonder if all white families in US are cool if their kid marries a black..Pardon me, I’ve heard in many cases, it’s not too different from what it is in India..
Moral fortitude is a personal matter. If you think Desis don’t have skeletons in our closets, its because we have years of training and conditioning in hiding them. “Scandals” happen everyday and what goes down there is no different than here for the 20-30 year olds that I can speak to, from personal experience.
I’ve been to India over 30 times, stayed there for months at a time (on several occasions) and run large (400+) teams across several cities in India. You have no idea what you are talking about. I have a good friend (sr. manager in one of my teams) in one of the worst situations imaginable – father is extremely sick, yet if he takes him to a hospital he risks him not being treated unless he can guarantee payment (up front). An extended hospital stay would essentially bankrupt the family.
Tens of thousands of widows sell their young daughters into sexual slavery every year to pay to live (w/out a husband to work or a very strong family network, no one in the society cares about these types of people). This comment reeks of upper middle class elitism – the vast majority of the Indian population sits at or below the poverty line… go walk through the slums of Mumbai to see what the country is really like…
@DeveloperFISH,
So, you are telling (or guessing) that all windows belove poverty line, in India, push their children to sex slavery to make a living. So, who’re buying them? Millionaire pedophiles from USofA, like they do in the movie “Hostel”?
Whoa man! Get a life, get well soon.
Anand,
Almost half the whites in America voted for a Black guy. What do you think? I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist among my White part of the family. All I’m saying is arranged marriage isn’t as perfect as some Indians make it to be. For example, how many of those arranged marriages are outside one’s caste or religion or even region? As far as I know, arranged marriages are usually within one’s caste.
+ 11111
ROFL!!!!!!! I think you watch too much American movies. hahahahaha
Chris, 3 questions
1) why would you take an american name?
2) have your parents chosen your bride?
3) do you have a child slave in your home in india?
Every good human trait (that distinguishes us from most animals) come from an inhibition, and in this case the inhibitor is the social stigma. I agree that some families suffer from not being able to divorce, but a lot more adjust to live and love over the life. It is sometimes better to adjust than fail to find the love of their life and get old before they even find one. The social stigma and the structure does help when it comes to greater cause.
@John
When people are happy marrying within their caste, who are we to complain? It’s none of our business;
u r over doing it man…india is nt tht great dude!!
in the tenth century the Iranian chronicler Albuqurque, remarked that Indians are one of the most arrogant ppl he has seen, they think they have the best culture, best religion, best customs, best food, and treats every other culture as foriegn or malign or “maleccha” or “shudra”. lets eradicate tht anitquity belief which exists.grow up!!
…so you are saying, we should listen to some guy from the 10th century..who has a city in NM named after him.
well if.. mr. albaqurque said it..he thought he was being judged so he passed a judgement, we should name a city after this guy!
no i m saying…even in the 10th century india had the same cultural ego like it hs nw.
I am not sure if drank a magic potion that extended your life and make you sleep for so long…
I am glad you woke up. This is 21st century, not 10th. Lot of things changed since then that, we don’t even know the source you are talking about. Of course, it is largely irrelevant now.
If Human Rights is the only reason that you are complaining about then China must not grow either.
+1, unfortunately.
@Kevin,
PLease do keep thinking that and never climb out of your well. India is developing and will continue to do so in future. Where did yo get the idea that arranged marriage is human rights violation? We’ve the lowest divorce rates in the world which proves that the arranged marriage system works quite well. Please don’t alk too much about humn rights. After Vietnam, Falkland islands, Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan atrocities you’ve no face to talk about it. Moreover majority of your blacj and Hispanic population is languishing in jails hat do you’ve to say about that. If we have the capacity to learn and devleop something nothing will stop us from doing so cos Human rights and Mind have no correlation. If you repat a lie an thousand times it won’t become the truth. And the truth is at some point in the future India will displace USA as the leader in science and trade. History and time both are with us.
Again – another idiot… the number of disenfranchised at or below the poverty line is actually growing (not shrinking). The perception you have is based completely on the fact that the (relatively small) upper middle class now has some economic freedom – what India lacks (above everything) is value for the human life. You don’t get to ignore your beggars and “lost children” while continue saying “things are getting better.” India is quickly building the 21st century version of Victorian England, where the children in the lower classes had life expectancies of 25.
Incorrect. Below the poverty line (BPL) is not growing, quite the opposite. BPL was 37 percent in 1993-94 and it had declined to 27.5 percent in 2004-05. During the same period, population increased by approx 180 million. In absolute numbers, 208 millions have been lifted above the BPL line.
Did you watch Slumdog… movie, recently? Just an FYI. it is a movie made to entertain westerners, who love to see India is nothing more than slums, snake charmers, and saffron clad saints.
You will be in utter shock, if you judge India by that movie. India grows, irrespective of your protests, rather slowly and painfully.
@mmm… why don’t u accept the truth. Slumdog Millionaire is just a small glimpse of truly how pathetic our society is. And you comment shows how pathetic your social awareness is.
The story of the movie has been written by an indian who lives by the lane. And it is very much true about our country. Stop bothering the people outside.
@arvind, I didn’t say problems don’t exist, but India is much more than that. The topic of the article is CAN India do something innovative and useful? The point is yes, it can, despite its short comings.
No, I am not socially unaware. In fact I am more aware that I see NOT ONLY slums, but also super computers and Chandrayaans, and that’s the point.
What YOU don’t get is, these people are putting India down with the pretext of its shortcomings.
FYI. Every country has its list of negatives.
Um.. what you’ve done there is compare an entire continent to a small part of the USA.
I wasn’t aware everyone in the USA now enjoyed universal prosperity.
Thats a pretty ignorant statement about India (I suspect you are a Pakistani
). While there are child laborers in India (like many countries including western countries) there is hardly any slavery involved.
Arranged Marriages is more of a cultural thing. You can blame Indian arranged marriages all you want but we have divorce rate of less than 2% (atleast most of grew up in a 2 parent system).
Atleast, now a days … in arranged marriages the parents help find the girl/guy and get them introduced and if they do click …. they get married. They are not forced to get married. The selection process works from both side of the families and also from the children if they want to meet the other person or not.
In the US (Western), your friends introduce you to other single friends. If you click, you end up dating & getting married to them.
I am an Indian living in the US. I pretty much find the two processes being almost similar, except in one your parents help and in the other your friends help. Infact, Indians are lucky to have two sources of Introductions … anyhow i dont see arranged marriage as a Human Rights Violation.
Once, a friend here asked me do you guys have cars in India ? … I said no, everyone has Elephants outside their huts. The more number of Elephants you have the more affluent you are.
Not all India bashers are Pakistanis…Give those poor fellows a break! lol
There are no child laborers in America. The reason divorce rates are so low is because of the social stigma associated with divorce.
have you been to detroit?
You seem to have lost touch with India, or you NEVER had enough understanding of its character.
Arranged marriages work because, they involve parents and other elders on both sides, in not only selection of the bride, but also in smoothing any inevitable differences/conflicts that occur between the couple.
On top of that, since the bride or the groom needs to get along with others in the spouses family, consensus building in bride/groom selection helps.
Choice is overrated in western countries. It is evident, when Britney divorced her husband just hours after marriage. Marriage is a joke in western countries.
I did hear some theories that Pakistanis masquerading as non-Pakistanis are posting anti-Indian messages on many internet forums;
Agreed, that those problems do exist (on various scales in different places), but it’s not as bad as you make it out to be. The population size is just phenomenal, and although that’s not an excuse by itself, things _are_ changing, and will continue to.
@Kevin
Arranged Marriage is not a Human Rights Violation. Seriously recommend that you get your facts straight. Read more about Harnesing India’s Technological Potential – http://online.w...0579365637.html
Wow! If arranged marriages are human rights violations then the American tradition of not caring for elder parents is also a human rights violation…..
+10
Oh! Pfff…
Stop the “India is poor, child marriage is prevalent” rant. It is off topic and should be discussed in a separate forum.
Why do you nature hugging peace loving hippies have to respond to each and every thread with India is this and India is that.
The writing is on the wall and I can read it quite well, I don’t need an announcer to read it out loud every time I pass by.
As for this topic, again its just another excuse for some laid off engineer or a paki acting as a laid off engineer to throw jabs at Indians.
I hope atleast some of Murthy’s fund goes out to encourage budding entrepreneurs from colleges and in grassroots level.
I expect this will happen. Narayan Murthy is a true visionary and has the highest ideals and values.
dude..you gotta really wake up. Have you ever worked at Infosys. It has one of the most unethical practices going on
1. Training whole set of people on one license
2. Not paying people proper wages in USA ( yes 60K for 10 year exp architect…minimum required is a fraud)
3.Keep on calling INdia based model as global delivery model…THey name in GEM — global engagment model..inside it is called Global exploitation model..get a grip.
4.Never ever investing with the client but just focusing purely on your own profit ( lost lot of accounts in this recession i am sure)
5.exploiting H1b by claiming that there lame 3 month training makes a chemical engg guy equivalent to computer science guy.
6. Misusing L1b visa to send peopel across to work at client side and not in their own office
7.No equal opportunity employer. They have more than 5000+ employess in USA and out of them 1000+ are living for more than 6 years in USA. Why 99% of them are Indians..hardly any chinese , hispanic , black etc
8.False resumes
9.creating a company that never used its cash to grow – acquire other firms..acquire another skills ..expand globally but keep paying cash dividends out even when growing at 40%..I am sure you understand finance
10. Always sold his personal stock at peak giving lame excuses – like secondary ADR issue in 2004/5…and now his stock..He says he requires it for VC fund..same week his wife sold and tha tis for sure..another fund..
I can carry on but please you are smart enough guy , a fellow IIT guy. I hope you are not believing that these 4 IT companies of INdia are ehtical visionary and blah blah…They are just money arbitrage players and playing it well
If Murthy has ideals ( I give it to you that he has vision) then I swear to god I am Gandhi
It’s evident that India needs an active VC community which are intrepid enough to expand their risks. The reason that Venture Capital is quite a new thing in India does give us a reason that things will grow in future.
It’s not just the India entrepreneurs that are trying to prove but VC’s themselves have a big task of creating a brand for them. So far they are trying to mitigate their risks by mostly putting money into ventures which are relatively risk-free.
So, my perception is that things will improve.
Venture money will follow the innovation. If entrepreneurs build the great companies, VC’s will flock to their doors.
It’s a vicious cycle..VCs don’t want to put money where not much innovation exists, but great innovations (not run of the mill startups) can only happen when the founders feel secure that funding is very gettable..
well, i dnt like my saying this ,me being the extreme nation worship type, bt our innovation quotient is low. its social inertia carried over from the days of british raj, wen educated indians were trained to be clerks, nd after the IT revolution came, we like the suck ups we r, leeched to the uders of the American Cash Cow. well thts changing, but at an excruciatingly slow pace, we need ppl like Prof. Vadhwa for instance, to tour the IITs, NITs, other engg colleges, along with Mr. Anand,for instance, and together with their malice and shock value(former) and statistics revelations of discrete nature(later) can shake up dose guys running dose universities and bring some innovation thing in the education system.
word of advice u guys: bury ur hatchet, collaborate, tour india, revolt, nd say this with me…”its going to be L-E-G-E-N-D-A-R-Y”
meanwhile i will innovate new ways to skip innovative thinking.
ofcourssseee, its going to be legendary!!!!
[This comment is probably totally off-topic!]
India’s big, gaping problem is it’s horrendous education system. 90% of all school-going children are brainwashed and brought up in a manner that can only result in them becoming robotic doctors and engineers. A student who can mug up a thousand Math, Physics, and Chemistry books and crack the IIT-JEE is looked upon with awe. Another, who wants to become a sports player or a painter or a writer, is scolded and [almost] abused into mugging up ten thousand Math, Physics, and Chemistry books. This scenario is changing for sure, but I don’t see it going away completely in the next 5-10 years. Unless Indian parents (whose mindsets were framed by their parents) learn the ‘real’ meaning of education (which isn’t limited to mugging up books, scoring tons of marks, and getting ’secure’ jobs at 25 years), little is going to change over here. You may see innovative start-ups here and there, but we’re a country of 1.2 billion people and the number of those start-ups simply won’t justify that.
the focus is to get into IIT and IIM so that you can make a good living. dreams? they are usually crushed. things are changing but most iitians and iimians would still prefer stable jobs rather than take the risk and launch startups. at least the concept of running out of india is something that has lost its charm in the recent years. that’s some good news!
@OM
I still dont get it why ppl keep blaming iitians and iim grads. Simply put, I would like to request all those who keep saying iitians flee to US and Europe, iitians dont want to take risks, iitians want stable jobs,.. come-on guys, get a hang of it.. please search on google (i guess that’s very easy) for “entrepreneurship IIT” and yaa please visit http://www.ecell-iitkgp.org/
E-cell has been instrumental in setting up startups on campus, providing office room on the campus, funding through SRIC, IITKGP and other related activities. I know guys from my batch who run multiple startups, guys who’ve left lucrative jobs (in PSUs, mind it where job security is 110% guaranteed) to work on their startups.
Please dont make such baseless allegations. It really sucks big time when ppl dont even care to look at what one is doing.. and instead make such unwarranted comments based on imaginary stereotypes. Before the infrastructure, politics and policies… Its such a mind set that needs to change.
iit kgp does do tht..they are d patriotic type…proud of them…
Mitra, your remark is right in the subject. Infrastructure can be build, mindset will be hard to change. That IT students pay to do internship show how the mass education is badly oriented. Companies hire a complete college at cheap cost, train them and get rid of 3/4 of them quickly after retaining only the best. What about them ?
@bruno I don’t agree with your generalization. Sp on “Companies hire a complete college at cheap cost, train them and get rid of 3/4 of them quickly after retaining only the best. What about them ?”
Many companies I know of did send regret letter to students recruited on campus. However it’s not a mass phenomenon companies like Infosys, L&T, TCS, Tech Mahindra told students that they would be recruited after a timespan of 6-12 months. IT students do pay for internship is true thou and sad indeed.
Ankur, Bruno is indeed right.. Not sure of now, but at least in my college days, companies such as Infy and Wipro were called ‘bus companies’ who recruited people in bus-loads..
It is either that the companies are doing stuff that anyone and everyone can do, or it is that all these kids are super-intelligent..Actually it is the third – companies recruit so many simply to show the numbers to their American clients..
@Anand – We are all happy here because there are companies like Infy and Wipro who have provided the much needed employment to the young engineers here since several years.Even today they recruit in “Buses” including recruiting people from other countries.Perhaps you dont know what it means by being employed or what is involved in becoming an employer , try to learn and see if you can employ a few people first , then you will know *How much* is involved in giving employment. You can talk and profess “bus loads”, but to walk it you need to be extremely,extremenly fit ,Don’t underestimate
I don’t understand what you are getting defensive at. If you reread my statements, my point is not about the capability of the software engineers India produces. It is rather about the intent with which recruiting happens in most cases.
When I was first recruited fresh from college, I was on ‘bench’ for close to three months and I was lucky..Others stayed there for more than ten months. Why are so many people recruited if there is not enough demand? There are other reasons that helps defy supply-demand logic.
I highly respect software cos. who have provided so much of employment..But you have to understand that from the company’s perspective, generating revenues is primary. Providing employment is coincidental.
+++++1
+1
+1
+100!
This is one of biggest problems staring India in the face. And any amount of infrastructure provided by the government will not help if the education system MURDERS the basic spirit of curiosity and inquisitiveness in a person. Mug your way to the top is the secret formula to this system. Sad.
Bingo on point, Ashutosh..
It’s not just parents forcing their wards into becoming engineers or doctors – the mindset prevalent today is unless you become a software engineer, you have screwed your life up..
I fail it hard to believe that 90 percent of the kids out there want to either do a computer or electronics degree..
Looking back, I too was a dejected lot when I didn’t get an admission in comp-sci degree. It was like the end of the world, actually…
I’m doing Mechanical engg. in NIT-Rourkela. We study stuff like Thermodynamics and structure of fossilized machines. We even do electrical and advanced math courses, just to fill up the credits.
I’ve always wanted to become a tennis player since childhood, but this was supposedly an “undue request”. Lately, I’ve developed a liking for computer software and the Internet, but that too has to take the backseat while I digest thirty billion methods by Newton. In India, it’s a hard life for those who want to do what they like. You’ve to do what your parents think you ought to do, else you’ll be one arrogant, anti-social element.
Every nation has a couple of generations that need to go through it..Japan, China all have similar generations..But good thing, the next generation of kids have greater emphasis on sports though not to the level one would like.
Anyway, it is the definition of success/failure and the cultural mindset associated with it that needs a change..Hypothetically, even if you go on to become a tennis pro, if you don’t become real big, questions will always be asked if you would have made it better as a software engineer..
Keeping the society’s mouth shut is quite a task..
@Anand – So what do you think about so many peope who built Tata Nano, Who Built Scorpio and Reva automobiles? They dont think the world is an end without being a software engineer….Similarly, are you aware of what is happening in the Biotech and Pharma world in India, Go and read man….
I give up..Probably, in the society you live, people so much encourage you to be professional carrom player, sand artists, etc.. But in the society I know of India is, people (parents as well as brain-washed children) all dream to become either doctors or software engineers.
Very few mechies, chemical engineers and civil engineers from my batch actually ended up in the stream they belong to. All others ended up in one of Infy, CTS, Wipro or TCS..
@Ashutosh
dude .. you probably didn’t crack the JEE cause you tried to mug up physics and maths!! ha ha
why don’t you try to redo your education in US and see how much physics and maths you learn till you get into college.
By the end of high school (10th-12th) I knew basic integration/ set theory/ basic concepts of physics like the back of my hand. Thats rare in many developed countries, and it wasn’t so rare in my school.
On a totally different note: The little WP-Stats smiley is visible in the Blogs footer….Showing which plugins a blog is using isn’t a good idea really!
Solution is simple Just hide it! Just need to add this small bit to the Stylesheet:
img#wpstats{
width:0px;
height:0px;
overflow:hidden
}
Voila! Its gone!
Also, Good Luck to the Startups in India!
Its always a delight to see a new innovative Startup on the Internet.
@ Kevin: india is plagued with child slavery, arranged marriage, and many other serious human rights violations.
I like the arranged marriage and human rights violation connection. I think that this is a first.
Yeah, I was laughing at that corelation
No kidding, but it is a human rights violation.
Don’t you read about the 2-3 couples that are killed almost everyday in Haryana (’honor killings’) because they chose to fall in love and not marry the spouses of their parents’ choice?
It IS a human rights violation. Make no mistake about it.
Once again, don’t quote me the low divorce rates. The divorce rates here are low because of a ton of sociological factors. The divorce rates were low in Western countries too before women started earning and social attitudes to divorce changed. Here, unfortunately, the majority of women can’t support themselves to make divorce a reality and continue to live in bad relationships.
What would you choose? An unhappy lifelong relationship, or a divorce and another shot at happiness?
I would choose the latter.
@Puranjay: “Don’t you read about the 2-3 couples that are killed almost everyday in Haryana”
Wow. My reading skillz must be rusty. Can you point me to articles which clearly show that 2-3 couples PER DAY are being killed?
Or did you drag this gem out of your behind?
I suspect the latter.
How do you feel about divorcing hours after marriage, like Britney Spears?
That’s a very encouraging article from you Prof. Wadhwa. And thanks to Michael Arrignton too. To inform you the latest, an initiative from the ManMohan Singh Government is already started in Delhi when Dept. of Sceince & Technology guys already visited startups on door to door basis to consolidate a network of techies.
To add to that, the DST also funds incubation centers in Tech Universities in India. The list can be found at the DST website. This is a new thing and it will surely help a lot of students look at starting up.
Arvind, I was very impressed with what I saw. I set these meetings up for Sarah Lacy, but was really blown away with how fast entrepreneurs had moved up the ramp.
IMO this view is extremely over optimistic. I could list many reasons. (lack of funding, govt. related hurdles, risk-averse culture etc etc). These crucial parameters will probably never reach Silicon Valley levels.
I will happily take that 5 year bet with Mr. Wadhwa.
+10000
How much do you want to wager?
Mr. Wadhwa
1 to 100.
14 Nov 2014 : TC50-US and TC50-INDIA(if it, would, you get 100)
14 Nov 2019 : How many companies from TC50-US and TC50-India were successful. If 5 out of TC-India, you get another 100.
If ready, let us open an escrow account
And I would be the damn happiest looser you would ever see in the life.
this guy knws wats he tlkin abt…seqoiua trees dnt grow in a day..u evergreen pessimists
nd word of advice:
next time u are on a project, nd u dnt knw wats going on, nd u call ur nerd/geek friends to solve it fr u…stop!!! do it urself, learn d thing, thts hw u r going to innovate…by actually wrking!!!…i mean u..nt some cloudy smoky imagery of a super intelligent cool guy,,,it can be u
or or,,,,suck up to the nerd/geek friend nd learn it
btw…stop calling me,,everytime u screw up ur source file
nd drink less,smoking kills, dnt do tht, respect women, dnt pay bribes, hv less than 2 children, use condoms, dnt spit in public, dnt fart either, dnt drive fast, eat an apple every day, while ur at it.
+ spell words fully
yea sarkastic
yes they should focus on it
Indian startup scene does have a chance of exploding soon because there are a lot of really talented people here, who have worked for software companies for more than 20 years and now want to do something of their own
“India is morphing into a global R&D hub, but can it ever take on Silicon Valley?”
Maybe not, but is that the point for this readership? The aspiration is there. And that means hundreds of millions of new customers for all the products coming out of Silicon Valley. Those products that tell all your “friends” what $5-a-cup coffee shop you’re in, assuming (which you do) that they can all afford an iPhone. All that ingenuity pouring into the iPhone apps store, and not one of them that applies to any of the real problems of India.
Silicon Valley needs new customers for its rich-boy toys. If Indians decide that they need to invent and use things like Tweetdeck or Foursquare to be successful, they’ll do it, and Silicon Valley startups will have whole bunches of new customers.
And isn’t that the only reason why the readers of TechCrunch care even a little bit?
Can’t agree with you enough.
No customers
= Little money to be made
= Little VC money flying around
= Little incentive for IITians to sacrifice nice-paying jobs to indulge in entrepreneurship.
Thank you, Professor/Scholar Vivek Wadhwa, for the insightful essay pointing out the facts and reality of R & D; the entrepreneural talent and human resource capabilities existing in India, as well as providing a most incisive analysis of the challenging venture capital circumstances and resultant virtually unlimited investment opprtunities.
I agree. There are so many losers posting here. Just because they got kicked out of India they seem bitter and resentful of the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs who are succeeding. It seems that the idiots came here and left the cream of the crop at home.
About 2 generations of looser’s need to die before India has any chance of improving and these freaking 2 generations must include shitty politicians and people who just want to live in a 2 bedroom house with 2 kids, with enough money to sustain their families. Indian kids are compelled to get good grades from their childhood in syllabus which is about 10 years old even at graduate level and is unbelievably boring. Any kid which who fails here, is marked to suffer no matter what. Even in colleges lecturers and professors who come from middle class families create an imprint in their students minds that if they don’t get a job they are doomed. Most of the undergraduates don’t make it to a PhD because of all these problems an unavailability of colleges. Let alone in the field of computers, its the same scene every where…..I can go on….But it will be a waste of electricity here, which again is a problem.
Guys in US you don’t have to worry just yet, no one has enough balls here to overtake you or even stand up to you…yeah we might try to scare you but thats all.
Couldn’t have been said better!
I am an IITian, worked for a hi-tech company in US for decade and relocated to India last year. It is not as rosy as the article states. Being a startup in India is hard work. The work culture is task-driven and average workers lack a sense of ownership. There is no local Google like success story to motivate folks to take start-ups seriously. For a tech startup trying to go global out of India is hard without US presence, which remains the primary market for hi-tech products. I can do a whole post on debate this article.
Abhi, maybe you have not achieved success. But many others are on their way. You should connect with them and see if you can learn what they have done right. Startups are hard everywhere.
Abhi,
a) Being a startup anywhere is hard work! And you’ve just been here a year. Give it more time.
b) It is possible to inculcate a sense of ownership – we have an enviable attrition rate and some pretty passionate people. I must add that a lot of them are fairly empowered and have ESOPs, etc.
c) Yes, there is no Google-like story yet. I don’t know if we will have one in 3/5/10 years. But I do know that it’s a lot easier nowadays to aspire to be one – and that’s quite important: the ability to aspire (without feeling like a fool).
d) Saving the best for last…it’s a lot easier today to have a globally focused company – running out of anywhere (India, included). In our case, for example, we follow an online marketing & ‘hands free’ relationship model. This has allowed us to scale from 10 – 1500 partners in the last 4 years. And we’re based in Chennai! Of course, such a model lends itself better to smaller sales (consumer, SMB etc) and free/freemium products. Enterprise sales may be more difficult without field resources – but that’s also gradually changing!
Don’t dissect the article literally – take it for the general ‘direction’ it hints at. Of course, there’s a long way to go. If you ask me, what we’re still lacking (besides the infrastructure bits) is “knowledge in the air” of the kind Silicon Valley is known for. We also have some way to go on the social front – pity the poor 25 year old whose profile on a matrimony site hints at ‘failed entrepreneurship’. But that’s changing too – if you look around.
I wish you the best. Feel free to connect if I can help in any way (and for whatever it is worth, many of us here are from IIT, and returned to India after long careers abroad. Me, included)
Cheers
Lux
awesome comment threads…
India is beautiful, terrifying, infuriating, and promising all rolled into one.
Great description.
I think it’s more about changing the mindset than the technology in India.
I think the concept of a Geographic Tech hub is obsolete, and TechCrunch of all websites should know that.
It seems like the Silicon Valley crowd is stuck in the ’80’s model, where you had to “be there” to innovate. Sorry, in this decade, entrepreneurial teams can be spread across the country or around the world.
I have multiple successful tech ventures with people that I have never met from around the country and around the globe. Some are 2 time zones away. Others are in Eastern Europe, Australia, and the west coast. NONE are in Silicon Valley (although some of our largest CUSTOMERS are, ironically).
The old “Silicon Valley is where it’s at” for tech innovation is an obsolete model. Think about it, if ANY industry can spawn entrepreneurs from their basement in Iowa or India, the Technology business can. Email, Skype, Social Networks, … there are so many tools – you just don’t need to have a PLACE anymore (especially an overcrowded area with a bunch of wanna-be’s, like the area between I-280 and 101.)
Crap.
I have worked with Indian companies (small and big) for years and innovation just doesn’t exist with these people.
The true new R&D is happening in China as we speak , and they are gradually overcoming their main weakness (which is also Indians advantage) : English language.
I can understand your feeling
You worked with small and big companies ha ha ha
thats means companies can be big without innovation
Why can’t your companies become that big without innovation.
People for UAE should not speak about innovation better keep pumping oil
more then 75% women are illiterate in UAE and people talking about innovation ha ha ha
First i’m not from UAE.
Second , with millions of Indian developers around the world , can you tell me , as Tim asked above , of any one innovative product that came out of India?
Email, Zoho
Email wasn’t invented by Indians. Hotmail was invented IN AMERICA. Email existed long before Hotmail.
Btw, I agree with you on the Zoho thing though. I think American companies can really take a page or two from Zoho.
That’s bullshit and is backed up by nothing more than sheer racism and ignorance from your end.
Ok, Could be more than 90% womens are illiterate in UAE, you happy.
Here is a story who have problem with these kind of post.
Once upon a time there were two friends, one of which had dog which can walk on water. He showed his dog to his friend and ask about his feeling, his friend replies “hmm yaa that’s ok, but your dog can’t swim”
So world is full of problems and and it would be; otherwise human life will end.
In1950s the same kind of thought for the Japan, but now everybody can see the difference.
We all believe in iterative development, and this is a iterative development of India, today there are lost things are better then past and tomorrow there will be lot more.
About china and India, yes there are lots of things better in china and if people remember in 1990s USSR having same image and see where is USSR now.
Hmm .. comparing India and America? thats like comparing apples and oranges!
In India’s story, the access to capital has never been easier, and thats a good thing! Add to that, a huge (yet-to-be-realized) domestic market: telecom density is soaring, broadband connections are catching up, etc etc. Theres a huge amount of optimism here!
But all we need is time – time for markets to mature, time for products to develop. Thats the key!
Here’s a typical example of Indian IT:
http://www.reco...ech_support.jpg
Though I always knew you were an Ahole, the pic was funny..LOL for that..
Interesting. Is that a recent picture? If it is, then India is still as backwards as when I was there back in the 15 years ago. Back then, they were pretty clever in coming up with creative ways to use bicycle parts for machinery.
http://www.plug.../GoogleGola.jpg
That’s funny. Not typical.
Funny!! Good one. I love the attention to details.
Me and my crew changing shifts:
http://www.funt...n-funny-pic.jpg
That’s me, the guy with the mustache.
I’m sorry that I’m forced to stoop to your lever but just for arguments sake it seems you prefer to leave your poop stuck to your butt over cleaning it up with water which is much healthier by the way. Also, TP wastes natural resources and results in cutting of numerous trees.
And many other societies are realizing this simple fact that cleaning with water is just so much healthier and are adopting bidets.
Sorry 4 my comment, is only 4 sample…
with a crazy socialist marxist Barack Hussian Obama leading US, cou ntries like India will have it easy. US is doomed with its health care and anti capitalistic themes. Hussain Obama is killing US busineeses, and world will take over, Unless US people rebel and revolt.
I completely agree with Savage and Glenn Beck.
I agree with what you said about Obama’s impact on America’s US businesses; but you are wrong in saying that he is helping India succeed;
Intelligent Indians are as much feared by Obama as American conservatives;
I think a large number of the ingredients and catalysts are there, however India still has a long way to go.
Also, the silicon valley like ecosystem has to start in small clusters like Bangalore, Pune, etc…not the country as a whole.
Here’s my take on it: ‘Can ne Emulate The Silicon Valley Startup Ecosystem’?
http://aparanja...rtup-ecosystem/
Amit
“But India lags in home-grown venture capital activity”
who cares ?
I have read a wonderful post on this website:
“http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/20/what-have-vcs-really-done-for-innovation/”
Saying:
“It is the entrepreneurs who fuel the economy, not the venture capitalists or investment bankers.”
Hum … the author should talk to each others, there seems to be a disconnection.
Ok I go back to Sleeping as “But while the West was sleeping” the author stated.
Very funny article though.
“He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley” ok I hope he renewed his 500$ EECS processing fee to become one …
You mean the author should talk to himself, don’t you? He wrote the other piece as well!
This looks like something you find on Onion (or National enquirer for old media folks). There is not a single major success story in India. Successful startups don’t pop out of thin air. Its a matter of grit, determination and trial and error. It will take at least a decade to get a decent startup eco system in India. Forget about challenging the valley. Can you substantiate any of this without giving just snippets of stories. Where are the nos ? Vivek, I can’t see how you are basing your predictions.
Talk to anyone in the valley of the recent VC deal flow and they will tell you its very strong and the quality has exponentially improved over the already high valley standards. There are also many exit opportunities opening up here. By the time India has an eco system, Valley might just eat the entire pie – breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I hate your articles constantly pitching and comparing countries. I cringe every time I read them. These stories can be written without comparisons and it will make a better and informative story.
+1
Well said. Can’t agree more.
Sad, because I was quite hopeful after seeing Vivek Wadhwa’s first few articles where he promised a lot of original research. But it appears that he is more interested in promoting a point of view either by facts or by statements – often his own statements!
I want India and entrepreneurs to succeed pretty badly. I’ve tried my hand at it myself a couple of times, and I continue to try and remain hopeful that things will start changing.
But I hate the needy Indian psyche of creating illusions of Indian success by attaching itself to anything even remotely Indian, anywhere in the World. It’s not just in startups & entrepreneurship, it’s practically everywhere – like in Olympic Medals or Oscar awards.
If India really wants to be better than Silicon Valley then first thing is bureaucracy should be totally eradicated. No government and more capitalism involvement. India is lagging in technology because of government involvement in every aspect of policy making. Remove the government from the picture, Viola, India can be a better than a Silicon Valley.
First thing – for the foreseeable future, silicon valley will still be the best place to find innovation. Indians or Chinese who want to find capital and technology will go there. But this time they might do the actual coding/design/testing back home.
We seem to be very myopic with regard to time spans. ‘Silicon valley’ has been ’silicon valley’ for how long? 50 years? That’s hardly not enough time to say that this will always remain the epicenter of innovation. Many of the third world countries with huge problems today were pretty advanced civilizations(innovation wise) just a few hundred years ago. Yes. Even the much maligned arabs.
How many ’silicon valley’ super innovative companies have survived profitably for over 50 years? The size of these companies are still not comparable to Proctor and Gamble, Coke etc.
We also have to decouple ‘innovation/r&d from the business of making money.
Is Coke innovative or ‘game changing’?
Conversely , making money does not mean being innovation in a strictly ethical sense – porn, prostitution and drugs are pretty innovative if that were true.
Another big source of ‘innovation’ was the financial markets – and New York etc was the epicenter of the ‘innovation’.
There is nothing to say that India/China/Israel/Eastern European countries will not launch ‘game changing’ products in the near future.
Good observations.
Perceptive observations, I agree. I would add that the recent fate of financial “innovation” in NY and London demonstrates how dangerous new, untested, unproven innovation can be. It can take down entire economies – Iceland is but one recent example. Speed of innovation, time to market is not everything its cracked up to be.
Another point to note is that the depth, breadth and extent of VC funding available to Silicon Valley is directly related to the era of loose monetary policy, credit excess, lack of regulatory oversight (financial derivatives) etc in the U.S. Ultra cheap $$$ and there is also a tie in to the USD being the reserve currency of the world.
Early 2000s, I knew of a startup in Boston that had no dearth of VC funding, talent and ideas but its product never saw the light of day. The issue of waste, ROI and failure rates need also be studied.
I’m an Indian who studied here and worked for a few years at Microsoft, and am returning back to set my startup in India. I did my homework the last few years and believe that at this stage Chennai is a better place to start a company than Seattle. Even though the initial startups were primarily service companies, a lot of new startups out there are starting to focus on products.
There is a lot of raw power out there at still pretty affordable prices, and that means if you are bootstrapping your startup you have a long runway and that increases survival exponentially. Chennai, Banglaore, Delhi, Pune and Mumbai are also teeming with a lot of young people who are willing to put the hours and all thsoe cities now have an active startup community.
While, India is still ages behind US in overall development, for an entrepreneur that is the right kind of market. If you are an entrepreneur would you go work as the boss of a million dollar company or go as a worker in a $100 billion company? The same logic here. You might need to do a lot of things, you will be randomized, irritated and forced to be a jack of trades. But, if you master that, you can keep growing with that exploding market.
Phew !!! Globalization is an on-going process, please dont care who invented gmail or hotmail, which nation overcomes the other… bla bla..
whatsoever.. we are going to get benefited.
I didn’t notice a female post here…….a country can only go so far when they treat women as second class citizens. Arranged marriages only work because a majority of the women have no future if they have no husband.
When women are treated as equals in India, the desert will freeze and the camels will come skating home. Meanwhile, yadda-yadda-yadda…..
well, fight for it, kick ur husband/boyfriend in their weakest spot(u knw where it is, no telling) and go get it..u can’t claim equality nd at ask for it from d same ppl who are nt being equitable.
plz dnt come to me.. i m already flooded so much tht it hurts like hell…
True. It is not a better situation than a country that doesn’t want to fund abortions and have the highest ratio of bastard children as a result. The country that has the highest debt to the world and uses its military to keep the currency floating (invasion of Iraq). Yeah, women are treated equal in on country thus, highest cases of rape and incests per 1000 humans. Yes, snow will not fall in december when that country becomes perfect. Yes, these were cheapshots but, that is what this country is known after neo-cons and their slumber party in town halls.
kitty, we’re talking abt india…not middle-stan….its cows
did ur pops let u go to school?
I am not arguing whether India is or is not taking on Silicon Valley, but I find it funny (weak?) that the author refers to his own articles in Business Week to substantiate his opinion of “Indian IT morphed into a giant R&D machine”.
It is obvious that you didn’t read the article. Here is a report which you can download which shows in detail what is happening in Pharma, for example.
http://papers.s...ract_id=1143472
India I is believe more closer to late 19th century US, when powerful entrepreneurs like JPMorgan, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Goldman, Bell, Edison… built the US what it is now. Like US of that era India lacks basic facilities and dirt & squalor rules. It is crude, violent and uncouth. But, it has got the energy, talents and dreams. And at the end of the day that is what matters for an entrepreneur.
Simplistic. The Indian economy operates at many different levels and while some parts may in the 19th, others are clearly in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Sure there are mega entrepreneurs, but let us not forget that the so-called unorganized sector of the Indian economy is seething with millions of small & mid-size entrepreneurs. Every paan-, rickshaw-, thela-, veggie-, kirana-wallah is an entrepreneur.
Nowadays, I’ve seen the corner paan-wallahs & kirana shops taking orders on mobile phones & delivering door-to-door. Innovation & innovative thinking happens not just at the product but also at the process level.
A recent startup in Chennai is selling vegetables (19th century business model) but doing it online *and* the price includes cleaning and six different cuts according to customer preference.
My eyes light up when I see another Indian article. You guys (at TC) are spoiling me
I am an expert on India. By a show of hands, how many people would like to hear my opinion?
I would love to hear your opinion.
you got me curious
Hi,
I think this post has got out of hand. I think its good to see India slowly coming up and doing well. I think every country has it’s time. I think the time is good for India right now and I’m sure they will use it to their advantage……
just a little thought however, if we had more indians in investment banking, maybe thing’s wouldn’t have got so bad as they do have common sense!
Disappointed to see a cheerleader article lacking substance and credibility, and speaking from my own first-hand experiences and understanding of what’s going on in India, mostly baseless propaganda.
Not worthy of an academic out to do original research to dig up facts and persuade us with proof and rigorous analysis backed by solid references.
Look at his conclusion:
Statement:
“I’ll bet that in 5 years, if you stacked up a TechCrunch 50 of Indian start ups versus a comparable number of U.S. startups, it would be a pretty even match.”
Conclusion:
That’s pretty amazing considering the relatively short length of time that the Indian startup scene has existed.”
What’s pretty amazing? That you made an amazing statement?
Murali, are you the nutcase who runs that wierd “Agile Entrepreneurs” group? What a joke. You claim to speak from some kind of authority?
Murali, I am surprised to see you still using your real name for such posts. Didn’t you learn enough from that silly group you tried putting together?
I met this clown Murali at a TIE event and joined his group. To call him a clown would be to insult clowns so I won’t say any more!
I can build you a better looking website/page for free..mail me..
Such thoughtful responses going straight to the heart of the matter – you might even have convinced me if you only tried, instead of name-calling and making ad-hominem attacks.
Learn some netiquette, you shining symbols of India:
http://www.paul...m/disagree.html
India is slowly rising up in the innovation ladder..
All of this attention being given to Indians makes my sick. What about Cowboys? There hasn’t been a single TC article on Cowboys!!! Yet, articles about Indians appear every week!!! Remember, us Cowboys won the war!! Remember also: It’s Cowboys and Indians, NOT Indians and Indians!!
That’s cuz you cowboys fought the fake Injuns (the ones that ole near-sighted chris mistook for the real deal), not the real ones.
When faced with the real mccoys, you are losing of course. On earth or on the moon. Even the majority of your Silicon Valley startups are actually being done by the real Indians.
The world is coming to an end on December 21, 2012. So why bother………..LOL
Give India time. There is space for many Silicon Valleys across the world.
Excellent comment.
Vivek,
Please make sure to post whatever your next venture will be so we can all get as far away from it as possible. It’s pretty clear that you’ve ignored 95% of the Indian people’s problems and focused on the tiny 5% movement in the upper middle class. #Fail
Excellent column Vivek. Keep up the good work and do email me directly your next effort.
thts abt 250 million ppl..by the way..nt jst 5%. ..the “engines of growth” for ur simplification
Some advice: Stop wasting time reading these comments… it is turning into a useless cesspool.
Get to work. If you want to be Steve Jobs tomorrow, you have to work like Steve Jobs worked in his youth today.
Read Wozniak’s autobiography “I, Woz”, for a description of the hard-working Steve Jobs. The guy who arranged a game hardware development project on almost impossibly short delivery terms, which Woz delivered on, and for which Jobs completely and deliberately ripped off Woz (which he only discovered much later.)
This thread is very interesting and a subject close to my heart. Being born an Indian, and worked in places like Silicon Valley and Singapore, I have two points to add to this discussion, in my IMHO.
1) Great infrastructure need not always create the next silicon valley. Infrastructure is important but it takes more to be a silicon valley. There are tons of examples of places around the world in the developed world that has failed to mimic the silicon valley in spite of having world class infrastructure.
2) India, more than ever needs technology role models. In the elite institutions of India, the young graduates will be more inclined to doing startups if in the past someone from their college made it big doing a startup. Unfortunately this hasn’t happened yet. Entrepreneurship is more about motivation (and off-course people to support in the initial days), than it is about the education itself.
Country is people. The success of many businesses in silicon valley is combined effort of people from many countries. Indians are more in number in this case.
When you say silicon valley , part of its success attributes to India. It more flourishes in US because of the business or investments it allows here.
East and Europe is preparing for this kind of change and catchup has begun.
And true fact is – with the size of its population and to control it , its not easy.
The harmony is there with people. It should allow more businesses within country, just like US did.
It will rock.
I feel the VC community in India needs to get out of their comfort zone and look to incubate global market opportunties from India – am finding that the community lacks the risk taking ability and hence focuses on ventures targeted at the Indian eco-system that leads to building me-too startups. We’re lucky to be a country of 1 billion people – but I think VCs should have faith and encourage entrepreneurs to think global.
Needless to say, Indian startups with global visions have started to look outside to raise funding and the day for a global consumer brand to come out of India is very near!
“we are lucky to be a country of 1 billion people”….gosh mother of india
jealous?