Indian Society
Why is India a great startup ecosystem ?
There is a joke about India saying that « India is about the ABC’s » A, B & C standing for
Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket. It is time for the jokers to stop underrating India and to make the S of ABC’s stands for Start-ups.
India is the third biggest startup ecosystem in the world. In the past few years, the Indian startup ecosystem has been driven by factors like massive funding, growing domestic activities and cutting edge technology. The figures are impressive : 3,100 startups in 2014, a projection of more than 11,500 by 2020. Between 2010 and 2014, the infusion of VC and PE went from $13 million to
$1,818 million. Angel investment has also multiplied 8 times from $4.2 million to $32.2 million.
It’s a new paradigm for indian economy. It is changing the way the markets are working today in
India.
1) Internet allowed a new access to knowledge :
We must underline that the Online Courses platform Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) has more of 75% of its customers in developing countries such as India. Among those 75%, 50% are less than 18 years old. What does this mean for indian economy ? There are currently a lot of indian young people following lectures of top teachers from Harvard and other IVY League schools. In other words, millions of youngsters are getting new skills everyday on the Internet, but those skills do not have a big impact on their employability because they don’t receive diplomas.
This huge amount of skills transmitted daily thanks to google.com is creating a generation of youngsters in India that wants to value their skills through entrepreneurship. A report, launched in partnership with Google and the consulting firm Zinnov, finds that 72% of the founders are less than 35 years old.Internet created a new equation in India :
Access to knowledge + new skills + low employability = increase of entrepreneurship
However, there is still a social vision preventing some youngsters in India to live the start-up adventure : the society refuses to open up its mind, entrepreneurship is still not seen as a new form of employment. This vision is changing slowly but surely, for now the reluctances are still strong. This can sometimes lead qualified talents to ditch India to make their future abroad.
2) A huge domestic market with a lot of problems to solve
Another point that fosters start-up creation : problem solving. The most successful start-ups do not offer nice-to-have products but must-have products, the one that consumers are really ready to pay for because it brings a solution to a pain point. Structurally, developing countries have more fundamental problems to solve than developed countries, the first floors of the Maslow pyramid. India is a population of over 1 billion, and of that 1 billion, 970 million have a mobile device : technology allowed the apparition of new solutions to basic problems. For example, the start-up Practo (https://www.practo.com/) created in Bangalore has connected doctors to patient more efficiently by using an app. Start-ups are making indian daily life easier and more secure.

Indian Society
3) A comprehensive government
The government seemed to understand in the past few years the importance for value creation in the country to adapt policies for start-ups. The policies for startups and small and medium enterprises are evolving to make sure that they are supportive of new businesses. The policies must foster creations instead of becoming an administrative burden for start-ups. This implies pragmatic policies such as single window clearances, subsidized resources and tax benefits. The government also works in partnership with amazing incubators and accelerators, which help hundreds of start-ups each year.
As a conclusion, we must underline that India has one of the best start-up ecosystem thanks to :

- Its growing number of self-educating youngsters
- It’s huge domestic market, still touched by basic problems
- It’s supportive government and incubators
Of course, one of the most important factor of indian start-ups fever is its technological mastery, a point we did not developed here, but a so broad subject that we could dedicate a whole essay to it.