Building Tech Startups in India: Introduction

By Aparna Chennapragada, Guest Author

There is near-unanimous agreement on the ‘India story’ (at least in direction, even if there is disagreement in magnitude). Given the role of high-tech entrepreneurship in wealth and job creation, it is not surprising that there is growing interest in entrepreneurship and technology innovation in India.

On the face of it, several factors seem to be in place – inflow of capital, talent, potentially huge local market, healthy financial markets and a growing economy. However, there have been relatively few successful technology startups out of India yet.

Through my project, I wanted to understand the challenges in building technology-based startups in India. Over the last several weeks, I had the opportunity to talk to some of the entrepreneurs, investors, angel networks, incubators and academia from the Indian entrepreneurial community.

While the work is still in progress, I wanted to share some initial findings with the readers of this blog, to draw attention to the key issues and stimulate further discussion in the community.

Thanks to everyone who shared their valuable time and insights so far (In the interest of space here, personal acknowledgments are included in my final report)

Note that this is not a rigorous analysis using a statistically significant sample but rather a qualitative report based on inputs from folks on the ground on what they see as obstacles to success.

[Editor’s Note: If you recall, Aparna’s research is based largely on first-time entrepreneurs in India, and the challenges they are facing in bringing technology startups to bear. More specifically, the work is a drill down into the very early stage startups. You have, meanwhile, read my Incubator series, which also addresses this particular chokepoint.

A lot of money has been allocated for India over the last 2 years, but this money is not being managed in a way that can yield maximum productivity and impact. No, we do not need more funds. But we need the eco-system to organize itself to address the issues we have collected by speaking with folks on the ground. Please read on, and feel free to jump into the conversation.]

This segment is a part in the series : Building Tech Startups in India