India’s Startup Ecosystem: Could it Be a Credible Global Player?

It’s astonishing how few companies and entrepreneurs take advantage of the biggest asset the Internet provides: Easy access to global talent and competitive prices. Despite the ability to pick and choose from a global field, many players of the startup eco-system stay stubbornly focused on their immediate physical location.

This is a particularly backward approach when you consider how fast some economies and markets are growing. Take India as an example, where the tech scene has been skyrocketing in recent years. No other country has gained as much as India has, since the advent of the Internet in the late 90s, when the outsourcing industry boomed. Although it gained some bad press, it is now one of the most innovative, robust and fast-paced ecosystem producing some of the billion dollar unicorns.

A big part of the reason for this is that entrepreneurs have had to be more confident here than in other parts of the world, due to the level of expectation that investors bring. In many parts of the world, the investors support the entrepreneurs, but are mostly hands-off and undemanding, understanding that it can be a lengthy process.

This isn’t as much the case in India. There, the investors expect results quickly, resulting in a much faster-moving environment, with more pressure on entrepreneurs and startups. As a result of this, the startups have had to become more agile and lean, responding to the needs of the industry in the most efficient manner.

This gives a very different base for the tech scene to start from. It’s a more competitive, fast-moving and confident scene. And it’s begun to be supported in a more traditional way by organisations and government programmes that are seeing more varied growth and a more robust ecosystem, building tech-hubs in multiple cities.

This adaptive approach is something that’s happening slower in more established tech areas such as London or Berlin. There, the model has generally been on slower, more cautious builds, focused as much on exploration as results.

When these two approaches mesh together, the results can be spectacular. The fast-moving, growth-hacking-driven approach of India and the more established approaches of longer-rooted areas.

Because of India’s status as a fast-growing market, this hasn’t always worked well in the past. When organisations could create nothing more than a website and seem legitimate, some entrepreneurs were burned by bad experiences.

But in recent years, new online trends towards companies, organisations and individuals to be trackable and accountable have meant that the risk has been significantly reduced. For entrepreneurs and investors around the world, your name and history are out there. And that brings real accountability – if someone isn’t up to scratch, they’ll be driven out of business very quickly.

And as we all become more used to a connected world, virtual meetings and real-time communication, it only becomes more possible to outsource in a more collaborative and trusting way.