At the risk of being accosted on my way home tomorrow, and also risking it all on my first post on this blog. I have a question, Why are/do people find startup’s of no interest in India?
The question is probably not that straight forward, simply because they maybe of no interest because no one knows about them. But here’s the scenario, A new idea launches in the valley, it suddenly breaks into the blogsphere, users start to us, users in India get attracted pass the word word, and voila we all start using myspace, orkut whatever.
Now assume this happened down in Bangalore, budding entrepreneurs risk life and limb , build it and then…wait, emails, calls, tell a few friends, still who cares, who knows..no one, how will they, the people who talk, don’t want to talk, why should they?
You can ask all the journos in the world (bloggers excused :-)), but they are not interested unless they can recognize a name, or you can include the word Crores in your budget or revenue stream…why is that?
In a startup the entrepreneur takes a risk, the VC takes a risk…I guess we need a few more risk takers in the mass media. Correction, we need alot more risk takers in the mass media…just maybe someone will realize that some people want to read stories other that Reliance, Tata and Bharti.
To me the ecosystem is not just money + startups, PR is crucial. Example in point Proto been doing alot top get coverage…how many people know about it.
- Building a startup in 30 mins (well 41ish) – Iqbal Gandham - December 3, 2009
- Should Facebook and Twitter bother to make money? (Iqbal Gandham) - February 17, 2009
- How we got Nivio to Davos (WEF)…and won - February 5, 2009
Enterprunership is about hard work, determination and team work.
Our social and education system is corrupted because of the politicians & we “the people”.
Dont blame on anyone we have to overcome this hurdle.
Everything has its right time.
This is a good observation. In my opinion a lot of this is due to the high risks of becoming an entrepreneur in India and the limited protection from failure. Also the social ecosystem in India is not very supportive of failure unlike the US (particularly Silicon Valley) where failed entrepreneurs simply shake off their past and go on to do new things. Read Ajit Balakrishnan’s (CEO of Rediff.com) excellent blog for more on this topic:- http://ajitb.rediffiland.com//scripts/xanadu_diary_view.php?postId=1175605247
Media reflects its society.Now indian entrepreneurial ecosystem is nascent . Apart from success in IT we hardly have any thing inspiring to talk about.Around 30 years of socialism,poverty and unsupportive government policies prohibited entrepreneurial creativity to take its roots.
Media always follow things that affects/influence society.Mor recently only TATAs,Ambanies and Birla were the most visible face of indian as they are the wone who were creating wealth,job and vlaue for people.Then comes second crop of entrepreneurs with IT industrys INFOSYS,Wipro,TCS generating wealth and jobsfo millions and Sunil mittal who mobile afforadable for masses.I guess everyone who directly influenced society got deserving media attention.
Looking into the no. of start-ups( very very low ) we have in India who are creating direct value for society we cannot blame media for anything.We should remember that most of companies in Bangalore are still low cost outsourcing centers who never deals with society directly and are covered under umberella names IT or outsourcing Centers .
Media seek a inspiring story.Media seekcause.Media seek world chnaging idea.Media seek real value and wealth .Media seek wealth.Does start-ups in India doing any thing unique, original and value generating? Which compnay trying to solve this world problem missed media?
But still me need a more media.We need media to spread good news.We need media to reflect new change of world orders.We need media to help us creaing the right entrepreneurial ecosystem.I am sure once we had success stories to tell media we will get media attention we deserve.
You are want the media in India to get excited about the same products as people do in the West…that is not happening, because we have different priorities here and thus different things excite us…Rs.1 phone call excited the media here; Airbus 380 excited the media; and Rabbi Shergill was exciting too…all over the world things that make real difference to our lives excite us. With not too many internet connections around in India why should they get too excited about startup Internet companies?
As far as bloggers go, not much blogging going on in India, so how is the word to carry?