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Start-upTake-offs

David Karpe, the founder & CEO of Tumblr said “An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create”, while Dave McClure, founder of 500Startups, said “A ‘start-up’ is a company that is confused about three things: (1) What its product is. (2) Who its customers are. (3) How to make money”. When you read these statements together, it highlights the contrast in being an entrepreneur and actually running a start-up. Talking about sector-wise developments, government initiatives and opportunities are

at one end of the horizon; the individual contemplating the start-up journey is on the other end. In between is the boat-ride of preparedness, conditioning, learning, unlearning and re-learning.

Sticking to the basics and learning from those who have walked ahead soon becomes a core mantra for any entrepreneur.

The need for Entrepreneurship Education

The quick shifting dynamics of world economies has prompted many educational institutes to initiate Entrepreneurship education as part of their curriculum in addition to establishing many new institutions and centres focussed on only entrepreneurship education. Apart from B-schools, now even the K-12s, i.e. schools from classes I-XII, have initiated entrepreneurship based projects and learning as part of senior student’s assessment. Although many have argued that entrepreneurship cannot be taught as it is an inherent trait; like any other field this latent trait needs to be directed and nurtured.

The imperatives behind establishing curriculum around entrepreneurship can be explained with the example of one of India’s most sort-after conventional education degrees: Engineering. With over 3,500 engineering colleges across the country, it is no wonder that over 1.5 million

The previous articles in the series Start-Up Take-Offs of Invention Intelligence provided the readers with different aspects of the Start-up ecosystem in India, like the need to encourage start-ups, skill-leveraging, business assistance schemes, opportunities in India and the funding trends among different sectors.

In this column we shift gears to highlight the fast adoption of entrepreneurship education and grassroot entrepreneurship in a fast changing economy. We also zoom in on the new brigade: entrepreneurs, including the increasing number of she-preneurs, who power the start-ups.

The Start-Up Journey: Riding the Wave!DR. SWATI SUBODH

Learning from others

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students graduate in this field every year. Alarmingly, 20-33 per cent of them are at risk of unemployment. Many of those who are fortunate enough to get placements are underemployed with profiles well below their qualifications. The reasons are many; non-linear or stagnating growth in IT and ITes sectors, high degree of process automation in maturing industries, and finally, students being not ‘employable’ or ‘trainable’ due to abysmal standard of education in most colleges and the result – a daunting skills gap among graduates and the jobs they apply for. Also, many follow stereotypes to fit into traditionally acceptable career domains rather than explore options more suited to individual temperament. This may manifest in a disintegrating economic and social fibre at both an individual level and at the national level. Industry veteran, Mohandas Pai drives home the point, “By 2025, there will be 200 million young people in the age group of 21-41 with no jobs or with less jobs. Nobody knows what to do with these people. We are going to have demographic nightmare”. He further states that from manufacturing snazzy automobiles and customer banking to driving the Delhi metro; automation and artificial intelligence will predominate leaving lesser and lesser manual jobs. We may choose to personally agree or disagree with the morbid predictions but we definitely cannot afford to ignore these.

What most of us will agree to however, is that the world has changed from what it was even 10 years ago. The opportunities that exist now were unheard of before, so

were the problems and challenges that we now face. Measuring success with the same conventional yardstick is not enough. Experts predict that a majority of the jobs of the future don’t even exist yet! New disciplines & new thinking are the new imperatives to be in attunement with the times.

People are inherently creative and many believe that this very attribute will drive solutions to many of the modern world’s challenges. This attribute is also an unfair advantage which cannot be automated! In recent times, entrepreneurship has thus come to be seen as a social solution, in addition to being an economic urgency, with potential to design, develop and deliver innovative and creative solutions. Additionally, due to the vast spectrum of disciplines that are potentially covered under entrepreneurship it will enable people to explore and apply their skills and knowledge in areas where they can excel in and create impact and not be molded into stereotypes with diminishing possibilities.

The Entrepreneurial MindsetWho said entrepreneurship training is only for the start-up entrepreneurs?” asks Manav Subodh, Senior Fellow, Entrepreneurship & Director,

International Development, Berkeley Executive Education University of California, Berkeley; and Founding Board Member of 1M1B Foundation. He further adds, “There can be a start-up entrepreneur, a small business entrepreneur, a free lance entrepreneur and even a corporate entrepreneur”. Through his foundation he has been working with various youth organizations in the US and Vietnam to provide entrepreneurship training, with focus on social entrepreneurship, to students from modest and economically under-served backgrounds. Highlighting the prospects he says, “People can create their own companies or even use their entrepreneurial talent to be competitive in the job market”. For job seekers and students he advices, “You perhaps can choose not to be an entrepreneur, but you cannot choose not to develop your entrepreneurship skill sets. It’s a life skill today”. This highlights the rising trend among big corporate to hire people who are potential ‘Intrapreneurs’ i.e, those who can innovate and test new and creative ideas within the organization in the most cost-efficient manner to churn revenue generating products, process or service thereby contributing directly to the company’s growth. People and organizations have realized this and the focus is shifting towards

Google glass and sticky notes are a result of employee intrapreneurship initiatives

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developing mind-power and not just muscle-power. Big companies such as Google have made innovation an everyday process rather than a strategy to bail it out of crisis. It provides its employees tools, time and freedom to ‘launch and iterate’ ideas and come up with ‘moon shots’, i.e. solutions which are ten times more efficient than the competitor. They allow 20 per cent of employee’s paid time to be utilized for chasing inventions and potentially profitable ideas. Google Chrome, Gmail, Google Glass and Adsense are a few such ideas that came out of this initiative. Similarly, 3M’s popular ‘Sticky Notes’, is a product of the 15 per cent entrepreneurial time given to its employees.

Creativity is key; Entrepreneurs and Enterprises are both exploring this to the hilt to stay ahead in a market which is getting more competitive, more transparent, more informed and fast evolving.

Starting up at the grassroots

‘India lives in her villages’ our father of the nation famously said many years back. About 70 per cent of India’s people live in the villages and it is impossible to drive any economic impact without their inclusion. For any impact to happen, entrepreneurship has to reach the grassroots.

The start-ups are not just for the urban elite, it can be the propeller for social and economic distinction for the rural masses as well. With diminishing employability opportunities in the villages, entrepreneurship could well be a necessity for holding together and reinforcing the very stilts that

support our nation’s economy. In addition it could potentially curtail mass migrations to towns and cities, which in itself is fraught with socio-economic challenges.

On one hand, social enterprises have come into effect which enable grass root level manufacturers reach their market potential and on the other a national drive to promote village level enterprises has gained momentum. With the government’s MUDRA (Micro Units Development Refinance Agency) scheme, ` 1,00,000cr is being made available as loans to micro and small businesses in the first instance. According to the Finance Minister, this scheme is expected to provide benefits to 1.73 crore people. Many multi-nationals and big Indian companies too are turning to the villages for expansion and growth. In the process they are allocating a big part of their budget for activities in these regions. The National Skills Development Council (NSDC) also facilitates direction of capital under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from

corporate to the villages. This expenditure is increasingly being viewed as an investment to explore new emerging domestic markets rather than mere charity. Variants of the model of what companies like Amul did many years ago in Gujarat, are ready to be re-worked manifolds now.

Manav, who is working closely with rural entrepreneurs through 1M1B’s Micro-accelerators and skill-centres in various villages of India, believes that people should be mentored to be entrepreneurs taking into account their inherent skills and market demands. More often than not, people need to be made aware of the opportunities and schemes available to them to succeed as entrepreneurs. On the other hand, areas in rural India with skilled English speaking individuals are becoming preferred destinations for outsourced activities and establishment of extension units of start-ups and large corporations alike.

Take the example of Indha Crafts,

Customers at an Indha Crafts’ shop

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for instance, which was founded by Captain Indraani Singh, a commercial airline pilot. The idea of this enterprise struck Indraani ten years back when she interacted with some women folk in village Daulatabad, Haryana. These women wanted to become micro-entrepreneurs but were shackled by societal norms. They were skilled in handicrafts, stitching & sewing and wanted to be financially independent. Hence Indha was conceived; a name inspired by the cushion ring the women use to carry earthen pots on their head. For Capt. Indraani it epitomizes ‘women carrying their own responsibility’. With over 500 artisans being supported financially through the initiative, Indha Crafts has brought artisans and their families within their ‘Ring of responsibility’. The greatest challenge for them, more than capacity building and infrastructure, remains the lack of appreciation for handicrafts in the domestic market as compared to overseas markets. And thus started their efforts in storytelling

about the women who make the pieces and inculcating the art of appreciation. Indha Craft featured in Limca Book 2014, was adjudged a runner up in NSDC’s Power to Empower-Social Business 2014 and was conferred the ‘The Change-Stree Udyamita Samman 2015.

Saloni Malhotra, was prompted by the huge untapped potential of qualified people in villages. This led to the launch of her start-up, Desicrew, which provides services in data management, digital supply chain and customer experience management. The company started 10 years back with the idea of taking jobs to people rather than bringing people to jobs. Due to adoption of an impact sourcing model, supported by low cost of infrastructure and real estate, its services are 40 per cent more economical than an urban BPO. The hybrid and self-sustainable business model provides competitive advantage- offering top-notch professional services which are economically & qualitatively viable to the client while simultaneously leveraging the untapped latent workforce from the rural areas. DesiCrew presently operates from the villages of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and boasts of a 70 per cent women workforce across its

A Desi Crew centre

Increasing number of students like Bharath & Haritha are starting up early

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centres. Due to its unique operating model, DesiCrew has earned many laurels; Udyog Rattan Award 2013 and recognition as one of the top 25 social innovations at the Action for India Forum 2014 being just a few.

These examples are on two opposite poles and represent the diversity of enterprises that are emerging out of the villages. With the increasing internet penetration in the villages through the new fibre optic network and the use of mobile phones, rural India is a potential market which simply cannot be ignored. Promotion of rural entrepreneurship and employability can be a turning point in enabling balanced economic prosperity and closing up of the urban-rural economic divide as each would depend increasingly on the other for future growth.

The making of a new brigade

On the focus group most receptive to start up, Shri H.K. Mittal, Head, National S&T Entrepreneurship Development Board, elaborates “One of the easiest groups to start with is the one that has had some work experience and also are willing to invest their own money in the venture. Motivation and passion are other two attributes in the group for them to succeed”. There are no hard and fast rules on being an entrepreneur. In India, the age for starting-up ranges from 19 years-48 years with a median age lying close to 30 years. Take for example 19 year old Bharath Rao, a self- taught android developer and technology enthusiast who is also a second year undergraduate student. He is already a serial

entrepreneur and CEO of his start-up, Precily, a book summary platform. “Precilydistills the best ideas from non-fiction books for readers while also providing an author-ready platform to new and established writers” explains Bharath. The start-up, barely a few months old, has raised half a million dollars and is in the process of raising further 500 million. Bharath laughingly recalls that he faced incredulity from potential investors and partners initially because of his age. “Believe in your idea, build a team that believes in the idea, and get going,” he summarizes reflectively. Another young entrepreneur, Haritha, is an 18 years old engineering student from a weaver’s family in Mori, a small village in Andhra Pradesh. She is an entrepreneur working, with technology support from a large E-commerce company, to get Mori weavers on the world map by building a platform for direct sale and distribution of their product from the village itself. Although

on diametrically opposite sides of the entrepreneurship spectrum, Bharath and Haritha represent the growing brigade of young entrepreneurs starting early to test and validate their ideas. On the other hand there are umpteen examples of people starting- up after long careers in academics, and corporate world to take their experience and expertise to the market.

Rise of the Shepreneur!

The declining number of women in GDPed workforce across the world has been a point of worry for many years. Even though India has the highest number of women graduates, they constitute only 17 per cent of the workforce, and only 5 per cent of leadership positions. Perhaps as a result India has the abysmal gender ranking of 113 out of 136 countries. In the start-up world, women constitute only 13.76 per cent of total entrepreneurs providing employment to 13.45

SHEROES

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million people. Although these figures indicate a bleak presence with immense economic and social implications, they also point to a huge potential in women entrepreneurship with a large fraction of educated and/or skilled women who can jump onto the bandwagon to be financially self-reliant and generate employment opportunities for others. Metro cities have seen much improvement in women participation in the economy with 41,000 small to mid-size women-owned businesses.

Sairee Chahal, founder and CEO, SHEROES states “Women possess good soft skills and are natural multi-taskers, a factor that many see as a defining factor in future jobs. They control majority of household expenses and budgets; 90 per cent of women-led enterprises rely on informal sources of income arranged and managed directly by them in a primarily (98 per cent) micro enterprise, thereby revealing an inherent financial management acumen”.

Although competition is increasing in all major industries as India’s economy expands, the power of women-owned businesses is increasing too – especially in IT. It is no surprise then that tech companies are reaching out to non-profits, academia, and social enterprises, as well as national and state-level women’s organizations, to build partnerships and networks to advance women’s business-success. ‘GirlsInTech’ is one such initiative to further the mandate. Goldman Sachs has linked with the Indian School of Business to implement the

10,000 Women programme in India to provide business training to women running small and medium enterprises. In Science &Technology the government has launched incubator schemes and ignition grants for women to commercialise their R&D.

Various networking & mentoring platforms aimed at promoting & growing women led enterprises have gained traction. One such platform is SHEROES which aims to encourage every woman in India to stay on a career path of her choice and excel at it – be it that of a first time intern, work at home mom or a top corporate strategist or an entrepreneur. Sairee elaborates on the needs for a women-centric platform, “Many of them are also low on confidence doubting their skills, their ability to perform. Many need to talk to mentors who can help them with the various queries”. Sairee is among the growing number of women entrepreneurs who have made a mark in the start-up world today. About her own entrepreneurial journey she says, “It has been a series of learning and unlearning. Also sticking to basics, importance of process, mentors and asking for help”. Her start-up, SHEROES, which has more than 7,000 companies listed on the platform, has caught the interest of investors and is backed by Quintillion Media, 500 Start-ups, PayTM’s Vishal Shekhar Sharma, Google MD RajanAnandan, and Flipkart’s Binny Bansal.

WE connect International is another platform where women-led enterprises are certified or self-registered to gain access to a huge network of market connect

programmes and opportunities. In India, they are currently tracking 620 self registered and 46 certified businesses. The Certified businesses generate $127 mn annually and 42 per cent have experienced revenue growth since 2012. More than 6,000 women business owners in 100 countries are provided with the skills, training and networks, they need to succeed in global markets.

Saloni Malhotra, founder of the rural KPO DesiCrew, started her own entrepreneurial journey at the age of 23 years after earning her engineering degree from Pune University. She believes in creating wealth at the bottom of the pyramid by creating job opportunities for rural communities. In recognition of her innovative business model she was nominated for Business Week’s Asia’s Youngest Entrepreneurs, MTV Youth Icon 2008, E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 and also facilitated in the presence of the President of India by the CII. In stark contrast, Captain Indraani Singh continues to promote her enterprise, Indha Crafts, while being a senior employee in the airline industry.

With the alignment of opportunities and skills, the present ripple by women entrepreneurs potentiates a sea change in the ‘big-boys’ club of entrepreneurship. This also highlights a key aspect in entrepreneurship—there are no rules on when, how and where to start-up. The trajectory of the enterprise is as unique as that of its entrepreneur.

Dr. Swati Subodh, Co-founder, 1M1B Foundation, M-36, Greater Kailash Part-II, New Delhi-110048.Email: swati@activate1m1b.org