Open Letter to Mr. Kishore Biyani

Over the last few weeks, there has been consistent bad press criticising the startup ecosystem in India. The general air has been negative and when i heard Mr. Kishore Biyani comments, that 90% of start-ups are non sense, have no meaning, I though i had to pen down my views.

In my views, entrepreneurship is about completely dedicating yourself to creating something out of nothing, it means being able to take action and having the courage to commit and persevere through all of the challenges and failure. It is about passion to create some thing that you believe in.

The main ingredient is “courage” to pursue what you believe in. The motive that leads someone to pursue their dream should alway be once personal choice - whether it is too make money, sell it to large investors or simply be in it for long term.

It would be rare to find two people who share exactly the same passions, who see the world from the same prism. Cab Aggregator have not only provided superior services to their customers, but in the process have created and supported lakhs of driver entrepreneurs through their platform. Some of the leading Venture Funds, have shown trust in their ideas, backed them with million of dollars.

Raising money does not always mean that one is not thinking long term. The idea of scaling fast, increasing the size of the pie and getting more brains in the business have create long term sustainable businesses around the Globe.

Failure does not mean, that your efforts have no meaning. One of the reasons why Silicon Valley has been so successful in creating some of the daring companies is that culturally they recognise failure as a stepping stone to success. There are literally hundreds of entrepreneurs who have had failures and continue to pursue the next idea and still receive funding. The idea that someone who has failed on various occasion actually carries with them valuable lessons in also a valid assumption. Steve jobs for example was ousted from Apple and floundered for almost 10 years with Pixar and Next, losing most of his money before he made a comeback with iPod, iPhone.

During the past few month, lot of people have raised question about the viability of the online business. I feel India is Just starting out. With the launch of high speed network and coverage, we will witness explosive growth. Our e-commerce market is only USD 26 Bn, Compared to USD 760 of Chinese Market. Our Internet penetration is less than 20%,while growth in China exploded when internet coverage was more than 40%.

In my opinion one challenge that we need to address as a startup ecosystem is that of mentoring. In the valley, the alumni of successful startups form the seed for the following startups. The Fairchild alumni, Google mafia and later Paypal mafia invested in 100s of startups while also lending a lot of support with mentoring. In India, such mafia are completely absent.

I had opportunity to read a book called “It Happened In India: The Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar”. The book has a very simple message for all Entrepreneurs - “With conviction and self-belief no dream is distant, It highlights the fact that to conquer one’s dream one only needs passion”.