India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It also has a significant youth population & increased disposable income. Having said that, it has a pathetic percentage of budding entrepreneurs. The statistics of mobile penetration in the Indian market dictates the kind of growth it has achieved over the years. What this translates is a slew of opportunities that go unutilized.
There is enough Entrepreneurial talent but , not willing to take risks. One of the reasons is the safe , minimum guarantee approach forced by Parents on their kids not to take risks and seek safe employment curbs their entrepreneurship . In fact, a stark comment I wish to make here – one of the parents whom I was talking felt proud of his son’s achievement. Having gone to a reputed college, with extremely good academics, good background in software development, the dad was proud of his son working for Infosys. When asked what the son was doing at Infosys, his son said, he is working on a maintenance project for one of Infy’s clients. I asked him , what happened to the stuff he learnt – the so called Object Oriented Programming or the design or architecture or any cutting edge ideas on development , for which the son wore a dreary smile brushing aside that they were the thing of the past
Infact, the irony in today’s IT gamut in India resonates the same scenario. Students with great academics , picked up from the Tier 1, 2 institutes end up doing some dirty maintenance and support work for some clients in US. Now, I am not blaming the ‘dirty’ work. I am only saying , for doing these dirty jobs, you don’t need someone from the Tier 1, or Tier 2 institutes. If the IT companies just do what is right to the building of an eco system, they wouldn’t make dud heads for want of $$ revenue. The reason why we have less product development companies in India as compared to US or Israel is because of the local brain drain of talent working on mundane , often support work that doesn’t need top class talent.
Coming back to the state of entrepreneurship in India, risk-taking appetite is one of the major concerns. Because, risk not only means to Finance, it also seeps into emotional , quick success wherewithal , unpredictable future etc., Support system from mentoring, funding, lack of available leadership resources becomes a huge bottleneck for encouraging entrepreneurs. Adding salt is the corruption that exists in creating business life more miserable. The service economy will help Individuals who aspire to create companies that can be built to last. There should be a fundamental change in the mindset in creating small businesses, nurturing them thus creating employment for self and others.
After all , most business were once a small but scaled big over time.