Many of us in corporate India have built successful careers around this logic, helped in many ways by employers’ generosity and good stock options which bear fruit over a period of time
There is a buzz in the air today – in the corridors of corporate India, in the hallowed halls of premier academic institutions and sadly also in the cafeterias of dubious engineering and management colleges everywhere. There is a refrain that emanates from politicians, institute directors and even parents which goes “don’t be a jobseeker, be a job creator.”
If one were to believe all the hype it would appear that the environment is right for every twenty-something person to abandon their ambitions to work for a Citi or BCG or Bajaj and embark on a start-up that promises to address some perceived discontinuity in the marketplace, visuals of the recent NDTV Awards where the pretty and vivacious Deepika Padukone presented the ‘Indian of the Year’ award to a group of seven unicorns (billion-dollar valuation), exhortations at the highest level to go forth and conquer the entrepreneurial world and the urge among young Indians to “get rich quick” are creating a buzz about start-ups everywhere.
A word of caution that the startups everywhere flies in the face of conventional economic logic which says that for every successful entrepreneur, there would be twenty or more loyal employees hired to make the entrepreneur’s dream come true and in the process build success and prosperity for themselves.
There will always be opportunities in the marketplace, which visionary young men and women can tap and equally more opportunities for seasoned professionals to build new business
Many of us in corporate India have built successful careers around this logic, helped in many ways by the generosity of our employers and good stock options which bear fruit over a period of time. I remember getting my first CEO role in my early thirties to lead a start-up training outfit APTECH and had the good fortune to see great success during the boom years of the computer education industry and reasonable wealth creation as a reward for my efforts. The 15-year stint at Zensar that has followed, which is eloquently captured in the Sage Publications book ‘From Start-Up to Global Success’ has seen unprecedented wealth creation for many shareholders and also excellent livelihoods and careers for over 10,000 Zensarians who have been part of this journey. One data point that illustrates our success is that in the five-year period from January 2010 to December 2015, the company reported a 44 percent compounded annual growth rate in market value, which is higher than all firms in our sector and orders of magnitude better than most firms in any industry anywhere in the world.
While we have to thank loyal and committed people who have been employed and stayed employed with us through the years and who continue to aspire to take Zensar to the billion dollar club and beyond, there has been no shortage of intrapreneurs within the firm who have presented a great idea and built it within the organisation.
There will always be opportunities in the marketplace which visionary young men and women can tap and equally more opportunities for seasoned professionals to build new business that can scale and address the real needs of society and the country. I must confess to being a little partial to ideas that are not just copycats of a start-up that succeeded elsewhere. As my friend, the irrepressible Sharad Sharma of iSpirt said at our Bengaluru book launch event, anybody who sets out to be the Amazon or Uber of India must remember that there is always the threat the Amazon themselves may decide to be the Amazon of India. The argument being made here is that when there are real problems to be solved and businesses to be built like APTECH and Zensar addressing real needs of local and global customers, would we be better served building companies for that.
Of course, there will ultimately a coexistence of both heady new ideas that create new market opportunities and scaling start-ups that solve the problems of the world because the steak and the sizzle have the potential to co-exist and build value for customers as well as shareholders. However the start-up ecosystem would have been truly successful if in 2020 we can look back and say “here are four or five world-beating multi-billion dollar revenue companies that emerged from the 10,000 start-ups initiative of NASSCOM or the New Venture Competitions of the HBS Club or indeed because of the Prime Minister’s inspiring speech when he launched the Start-Up India mission. But the road will not be easy and for every national or global success story, there will be 20 which make some money and create some value and probably 80 which will fall by the wayside. Never mind, it is a new world full of new opportunities and it would be good to remember what none other than Albert Einstein said.
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we have created them... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive.”
Let us build a new world... together!
BY Ganesh Natarajan
