BRICS JOURNAL 13

By Aarti Betigeri

India is a hive of entrepreneurial activity with numerous 20-something men and women building innovative businesses from scratch. We take a closer look at some of these success stories and more broadly, at India’s startup environment

Entrepreneurship

he Untold BRICS Stories:

Indiain

GA

LL

O I

MA

GE

S/

GE

TT

Y I

MA

GE

S/

IST

OC

KP

HO

TO

14 BRICS JOURNAL

When Nishanth Chopra was doing

an internship in his family’s textile

production factory in regional

southern India, he quickly realised

that things were not always what they seemed. Fabric

labelled “organic” was still being produced in an

environment where chemical fumes would spew out of

machines into the faces of factory workers, who were

not always wearing protective gear. His father insisted

that all chemicals complied with international organic

regulations, but Chopra was unconvinced; so much so

that he soon decided that, rather than join the 60-year-

old family business, he would forge his own path.

“I’d discovered at university that my interests lay in

sustainability, so when I came home, I realised that [the

family business] was not for me. I had always wanted to

do something ethical and environmentally friendly and

working with the chemicals and fumes didn’t appeal,” says

Chopra, 22. After some thought, he settled on fashion:

it was an industry that dovetailed nicely with the family

trade, yet was something he could pursue in a sustainable

way, and an industry that was exciting, interesting and

would allow him to travel and meet people.

Fast forward to March this year and Oshadi (“essence

of nature”) was born. It is a line that uses India’s

unique textile heritage: natural dyes and handwoven

fabrics, along with cutting-edge design. In just a few

months and one small capsule collection in, Oshadi

has exhibited at Paris Fashion Week and the Milan

White Show. “I found a designer who has come out of

Central St Martins and has also worked for some of the

big fashion houses. He does the design while I focus on

sourcing handloom textiles for it,” he says. It is a small

capsule collection of dresses, pants, jackets and shirts,

and the next one is due to drop in November.

Chopra is one of a growing legion of young, dynamic,

energetic and driven 20-somethings in India who

are working towards launching their own businesses,

eschewing traditional vocations and professions. In the

past, most Indians trod a well-worn path of pursuing a

safe government job or something in engineering, law or

medicine; or joining the family business. Increasingly,

20-somethings are becoming entrepreneurs fresh out

of university or with just a few years’ work experience

under their belts. In the past decade entrepreneurship

has boomed. According to the government’s Economic

Survey, as of January 2016 India had just under 20 000

technology-enabled start-ups. Five thousand of them

were launched in one year alone: 2015.

Nowadays, there are 20-somethings in every

direction setting up their own businesses: in Delhi, a

television reporter leaves the prestige of a major channel

to start a specialist cake bakery. A comic book fan

brings Comic Con to India. In Goa, an advertising

professional goes on sabbatical to open a bed and

breakfast. A music fan starts managing bands by 18,

and launches a music festival company in his 20s. In

Pune, a group of college friends get together to launch

a bicycle-sharing programme. In Mumbai, a lawyer

leaves the bar to start her own social enterprise. And in

Bangalore, it is all about the tech.

“India is a tremendously exciting place to be

for entrepreneurs compared to 10 years ago,” says

Suresh Bhagavatula, an assistant professor at the

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) –

considered India’s top business school and one of the

best in the entire Asia-Paciic region – and also the

chairman of the university’s in-house entrepreneur

incubator, the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial

Learning. Entrepreneurs nowadays have access to more

capital, he says, and there are more incubators, venture

capitalists and other resources now available, compared

with the past. In particular, with more than 1.2 billion

people, India represents a huge potential market for

products and services.

“We now have stories of success, not just of big names

but also in our own circles. hat’s a great motivator,”

says Bhagavatula. he big successes are, for the most

part, in the tech world, a ield that is ever popular

01

Nishanth Chopra (inset) and model posing in one of his creations

02

Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of OYO Rooms

03

Bhavish Aggarwal, chief executive officer and co-founder of ANI Technologies Pvt., owners of ride-hailing service Ola

01

COVER FEATURE

BRICS JOURNAL 15

03

02

because of the low overheads: all you need is a laptop

and a suitable skill set.

Some of the biggest successes in recent years include

Ola Cabs, an online taxi network founded in 2010

by the then 26-year-old Bhavish Aggarwal, which was

last year valued at $5 billion; online restaurant and menu

inder Zomato, founded in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal,

then 25; and OYO Rooms, a hotel room aggregator,

which was founded by Ritesh Agarwal three years ago

when he was just 19. He picked up a $100 000 hiel

Fellowship grant along the way, and already, OYO is

valued at up to $400 million.

However, the two companies that represent the most

powerful examples of the value of startups are both in

the e-commerce space. As recently as 2009, e-commerce

was barely on the India’s radar; there were virtually no

online shops of note domestically, and buying products

from international sites was a fraught afair, considering

the vagaries of the not terribly reliable postal service

and hefty customs duties. But that year marked a

turnaround with the launch of Flipkart, and a year later,

Snapdeal. he latter is an online marketplace selling

a wide assortment of products from mobile phones to

fashion, books to services, that was the brainchild of

GA

LL

O I

MA

GE

S/G

ET

TY

IM

AG

ES

/BL

OO

MB

ER

G .

GA

LL

O I

MA

GE

S/G

ET

TY

IM

AG

ES

/MIN

T

16 BRICS JOURNAL

and an extensive catalogue, Flipkart went from strength

to strength, adding other product lines, winning huge

funding investments and exceeding revenue targets. By

June 2015 it was valued at over $15 billion.

“Flipkart, along with other companies like Mango

Technologies and Snapdeal, are stories that people seek

inspiration from,” says Bhagavatula.

Despite Flipkart’s valuation being downgraded to

$9 billion earlier this year – Amazon is snapping at its

heels, and there is a general downward trend for the

tech industry – the light has not dimmed in the eyes of

Indian wannabe entrepreneurs.

“Flipkart was nothing in 2009, and look at it now,”

says Pushkal Srivastava, founder of Get Me A Shop.

“he guys behind Flipkart are billion-dollar guys.

Young people look at that and think, I can do that.

hey’re willing to take risks now to do that.”

Srivastava, 28, is a long way of from owning a

multi-billion dollar company, but he is on the way,

and regularly cited as an example of one of the more

successful of the new breed.

He was working for Oracle in 2013 when the buzz

around e-commerce was building. He noticed people

wanting to set up an online store going to developers

to build them and getting frustrated when they

were not delivered on time. he idea of a one-stop

COVER FEATURE

04

Kinal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, 25 and 26 at the time of

the launch. It is the second biggest e-commerce site in

India, with its most recent valuation put at $6.5 billion.

Flipkart, however, is the most prominent and

noteworthy of all the recent startups, the example that

budding entrepreneurs love to cite, the one that gets

their hearts pumping. Online shopping pioneer Flipkart

– the name, a snappy allusion to “lipping” goods into

a shopping “kart” – has been around for seven years,

initially focusing just on books. It was launched in 2007

by Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal (not related), both 25

at the time. he Bansals had attended the same college

and later both worked at Amazon, where they realised

they would never be able to ascend as far as they would

like while working for others. hey quit, moved into

a two-bedroom apartment in Bangalore together, and

spent 18 months building the business while receiving a

$200 stipend per month from their parents.

While conceptually, the business is very similar to

Amazon, where the Bansals excelled was in iguring out

how to address the needs of the Indian consumer. Many

people don’t have credit cards, or are not comfortable

with online payments. So Flipkart ofered cash on

delivery, a system that Indians know well and trust, as

there is a long and solid tradition of buying goods at the

front door. Combined with impeccable customer service

BRICS JOURNAL 17

shop for small e-commerce vendors sprung to mind:

why not let the users control the entire process? For

a few gruelling months he worked during the day,

then spent nights writing code. He picked up a few

customers, signed up to the TLabs incubator, and

quickly got his irst bit of investment – a cheque for

around $1 000, allowing him to quit his day job. Still,

the early months were a rough ride. “At one point I’d

exhausted all my savings and the friend whose place

I’d been crashing at moved cities,” recalls Srivastava.

“So I packed my bags and moved into TLabs’ meeting

room.” He secretly lived in the oice space for a few

months, experimenting with sleep patterns to see how

little he could get away with at a time (“One and a

half hours a few times a day is all I found I needed”),

sleeping on the oice beanbags and showering in

the gym downstairs. It took a few months for people

around him to notice – and when they did, he was

swiftly joined by other budding entrepreneurs.

(Eventually the CEO kicked everyone out.)

It didn’t take long, however, for more customers to

come knocking, and in late 2015, with about 1 800

users, he sold the business to the prestigious Times

Group, owners of the Times of India newspaper.

Srivastava, now with a tidy sum in his pocket, has

stayed on with the business to steer it through its next

growth phases. Already, there are 3 000 users signed up

and there are plans afoot to scale rapidly. “We plan to

be four times as large by the end of the year.”

Get Me A Shop’s rapid growth trajectory is

impressive, but one that speaks of the new era of

entrepreneurial infrastructure that is coming into

being in India. In just a few years, dozens of business

incubators or accelerators – companies that specialise

in helping start-ups – have opened up, including

the much-lauded Startup Village in Kochi, Kerala.

here are 16 chapters of the global entrepreneurship

organisation, TiE, including in more modest cities like

Bhubaneshwar and Hubli.

he main policy organisation for India’s software

industry, NASSCOM (National Association of

Software and Services Companies) launched an

ambitious programme in 2013, called 10 000 Startup,

to help startups get of the ground by providing angel

funding, incubation, mentorships or other support to

thousands of technology entrepreneurs. It holds events

like hackathons, summits, ideas contests and pitch

sessions across India, to help inculcate the dream of

entrepreneurship further among India’s youth.

he government, too, is on board. After realising that

harnessing social media was key to their electoral success,

the Modi government has shown enthusiasm towards

helping propel the startup culture. In January this year,

it launched Startup India, a multifaceted programme

aimed at making it easier for new businesses to get of

the ground, including measures to simplify opening or

wrapping up a company, and tax breaks. A vital part of

it is a recently announced fund of around $1.5 billion to

be allocated via venture capitalists to startups. It isn’t just

about buying into the hype surrounding new businesses;

there is a solid economic reason behind this: India

desperately needs new jobs, roughly 10 million each

year, to employ the many millions of its young people

pouring out of schools and colleges each year. India’s

population has youth on its side: about half of India’s

1.2 billion citizens are under 25, while 65% are under

28. Handled well, this demographic dividend could

reap untold rewards for the country. But mismanaged,

it could spell doom, with hundreds of thousands of idle

and poor young people simmering with resentment at

their circumstances.

Sixteen years ago, Deep Kalra launched one of India’s

irst comprehensive digital travel sites, MakeMyTrip,

which ofers fast online travel bookings to Indian

customers. It has not always been an easy ride, admits

05

The guys behind

Flipkart are billion dollar

guys. Young people

look at that and think,

I can do that. They’re

willing to take risks

now to do that.

04

Indian employees at the launch of Flipkart’s Largest Fulfillment Centre on the outskirts of Hyderabad on 30 October, 2015. 

05

Chief Operating Oficer and

Co-Founder of Flipkart,

Binny Bansal speaks during

the launch of the centreGA

LL

O I

MA

GE

S/A

FP

/NO

AH

SE

EL

AM

18 BRICS JOURNAL

“he big pieces of advice I have for young people?

Don’t underestimate the value of your team. Find

partners who ill the gaps in your own shortcomings.

Don’t get overtaken by ego, and don’t give in too easily.”

Kalra, speaking on the phone from his base in

Gurgaon, the business-focused satellite city to Delhi,

is optimistic about the current climate, and the impact

that young people can have. “I feel there is an ecosystem

that has never been there before in that people are

willing to help out with mentoring and other things.

here are also incubators. Back when I started, these

things didn’t exist.”

Abhimanyu Godara knows about the climate from all

sides: he recently left his job working for the incubator

TLabs to start his own tech business, having returned

to India a few years ago after working as a consultant

to institutions like KPMG and Deloitte in London.

Godara, 31, realised that India was a fertile place to start

something, that he from the beginning visualised as a

global product out of India. He is now in a good position

to draw on his two years of experience working for

TLabs: to know what to do and what not to do.

“What I found diferentiates between a good and a not

so good startup is open-mindedness. hose that listen to

feedback from customers, from mentors, from investors,

these are the ones that have done very well,” he explains.

“hey’re resourceful and listen to people who give

them advice closely. hose who don’t, haven’t done so

well. But that is partly driven by our culture – we think

COVER FEATURE

Kalra, who was 31 when he struck out on his own.

Along the way, his company has weathered its fair share

of challenges: an economic downturn, problems in the

airline industry, a dot-com bust, 9/11, early reticence by

Indians to pay for things online. But, bit by bit, things

turned around, and now MakeMyTrip is hailed as one of

India’s major online success stories. Mindful of the need

to give back to the community, Kalra now moonlights as

a mentor for up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

“Yes, money is important, but the role a good mentor

and good advice can play cannot be overemphasised,”

says Kalra. “Good advice can save you a lot of time.”

hrough his involvement in TiE, Kalra has been hosting

one or two mentorship sessions each week with budding

entrepreneurs, who have been selected as his experience

most closely its their needs.

India is a tremendously exciting

place to be for entrepreneurs

compared to 10 years ago. We now

have stories of success, not just

of big names but also in our own

circles. That’s a great motivator.

06

GA

LL

O I

MA

GE

S/G

ET

TY

IM

AG

ES

/MIN

T

BRICS JOURNAL 19

we know everything and we don’t need anyone to tell us

how to run the business,” he adds.

Godara will soon launch his business, a site called

Bottr, which is a personalised chatbot that draws together

information about a person from social media and other

sources. Say you are trying to ind information on Idris

Elba; instead of trawling Wikipedia, social media and

other places on the web, a personalised Elba chatbot will

gather all the information for you. “It took a few years for

my idea to take shape. I spent that time learning about

the ecosystem, about building a technology product

and a team, and how to scale and how to market the

product. Last year I took the plunge and decided to

start on my own.”

Godara is well aware that he is joining what could

be another cycle in what he describes as a “fad” for

startups, while noting that a few years ago, things lost

momentum and investors fell away. “But sanity has

now returned,” he says. One thing that needs to be

addressed, he points out, is a lack of diversity, with

very few women involved in tech startups. “I’d like

to see more initiatives aimed at getting young women

interested, and for there to be an improvement in how

society sees and supports female founders.”

When women do found their own ventures, however,

it is often to address glaring needs. Sairee Chahal

launched Sheroes in January 2014, a digital platform

aimed at supporting career women: helping them access

mentorships, skills, advice, tools of success and more.

“I began when I realised what an obvious thing it was

and that no one else had thought to do it,” she says. It

is the latest venture for Chahal, who irst launched her

own business in 1999 when she was 22 – a newspaper for

merchant navy sailors.

“he major challenge of starting up as a woman is that

you really don’t have the safety in numbers that men

have,” she says. “Access to capital and networks is always

less than what men have. hings have improved now

since when I started, but there is still a long way to go.”

Another who looked to address issues afecting women

is Sriya Coomer, 27. he Delhi-based lawyer in 2014

launched an NGO aimed at building a solid network of

lawyers, psychologists and other trained professionals

to help the victims of domestic violence, an issue she

witnessed at close quarters as a teenager with friends in

violent relationships. Seeing the shame and judgement

that victims faced if they spoke out about their situations,

she vowed to work towards helping them. Last year was

the irst operational year for Access, Control, Transform

– ACT – in which it won three court cases.

“I set this up entirely through networking,” says

Coomer. “I connected with lawyers and psychologists I

already knew, and tapped them for their contacts too. I

had friends at Google work on our website and inancial

analysts help us budget and get funding.” While she is

yet to explore revenue models, she is hoping to, down the

track, get enough funding to pay salaries.

For Coomer, ACT is less a inancial venture than a

social calling, yet ties in with the overarching emerging

theme of the country now: that despite the well-worn

clichés of poverty and stasis, young India is dynamic,

aspirational and on the move, looking to ill gaps in

services, create and innovate, and steer their country

towards a bright future. ■

06

MakeMyTrip employees

on their induction day

07

Abhimanyu Godara,

who will soon launch his

tech business Bottr

08

Lawyer Sriya Coomer,

who’s launched an NGO07

08