2012 a heady year for tech start-ups

Investors feel that while the first wave was largely services oriented, the new generation entrepreneurs are focusing on products. Services have now become a big boy’s game and hence everyone is focusing on developing products with usually a global market in sight. They are also helped by the fact that there is increased acceptance of entrepreneurship as a “first-class citizen". Nasscom president Som Mittal feels the change as compared to a decade ago is that the new wave of tech entrepreneurs are ready to start a venture out of college, unlike in the past when entrepreneurs were born out of a mid-career crisis. “These youngsters seem to be fearless and look certainly more confident about their talent and products,” Mittal tells FE.

Deepak Ravindran, the 25-year-old founder of Innoz, a SMS search service provider, points out that earlier many companies were eventually forced to sell themselves to investors rather than being able to sell their products. Now, with the resurgence of angel investors and seed funds, the start-ups are breathing easy.

“Among second-generation entrepreneurs, we see a strong belief about the products that they are building, which is for global SMEs. The feel of the product today is more global, while earlier the products were more functional," says Prashanth Prakash, partner, Accel Partners India. The early-stage VC fund has invested in Pune-based MindTickle, a social consumer interactive platform, which sells

... contd.