Indian start-ups have come a long way with the country becoming the third largest hub after the United States and the United Kingdom, with presence of close to 5,000 vibrant entities. The acceleration of these start-ups over the last seven years has revealed the deep technology expertise in the country, with the ability to come up with solutions that can solve multiple business challenges. The start-up community in India has witnessed its own share of inflection point at various stages and today all these elements have only strengthened the entire eco-system. The first foray by these start-ups was largely to leverage internet commerce but later this was followed by increased cloud adoption, which opened completely new vistas of growth. KS Vishwanathan, vice president, Nasscom and head of Nasscom 10,000 Start-ups programme, Bengaluru said, “The new momentum of truth has arrived due to the rapid growth and change in the last four years.” Nasscom, which started the 10,000 Start-ups programme, initially wanted to evangelise entrepreneurship. Along this path, entrepreneurship was largely focused on the business to consumer (B2C) category with the creation of companies such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola, Paytm.
However, as the start-up eco-system expanded, other important cogs in the wheel also sprouted—incubators and accelerators, venture capital community and mentors. Added to this, there was also the growing presence of subsidiaries of global companies in India who were keen to adopt the new-age solutions of the Indian startups. Looking back at this growth story, Vishwanathan says the Indian start-up eco-system today is well positioned to capitalise on the next wave of growth. This would actually mean that start-ups are more targeted in their approach with focus on the business to business (B2B) segment.
“If B2C is the opportunity, then B2B is the new demand. Today, the focus is on how do we co-create a solution,” said the Nasscom official. The general trend witnessed among the Indian start-ups has been that they are able to germinate an idea and lead it to a fruition which is generally the proof of concept. However, the big leap—the customer connect which tests the validity of their solution— continue sto elude most of these start-ups. It has been generally seen that only around 20% of these startups are able make their crossover in terms of securing customers.
It is this spot of customer connect where Nasscom now plans to devote considerable time and energy. According to Vishwanathan, start-ups are focused on four key things: access to funding, enterprise connect, mentors and accelerators. The Indian IT industry’s trade body has already been acting as the bridge between start-ups and enterprises through various initiatives such as setting up centres of excellence, taking teams of start-ups to various countries and inviting the large companies to visit their start-up warehouses to have a first-hand understanding of their solutions.
Nasscom has set up its centre of excellence for Internet of Things (IoT) in Bengaluru and similar such setups will come up at locations such as Ahmedabad, Gurugram and Visakhapatnam. “This is the place where one can co-create and get the necessary volumes,” said Vishwanathan. He quoted the example of Germany which is very keen to partner with these start-ups as that country’s strength lies in manufacturing and it believes that the future of manufacturing will be software enabled.
Besides IoT, Nasscom has plans to set up similar centres in other areas such as data science and artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. However, the challenge for the Indian start-ups, according to Vishwanathan, lies in the absence of a credible number of mentors to guide these fledgling firms. The future of the Indian technology start-up eco-system is still very bright as the number of such companies are growing at an average of 12-13% every year despite the not so fruitful 2016 in terms of funding. “The market has still placed their bets on these start-ups. We are hopeful that sooner than later we will see the emergence of global B2B start-ups from India,” said Vishwanathan.