I’ve been following the startup ecosystem closely for a long time now. I’ve built a couple of products myself and there’s one thing I want to make clear:
- There’s plenty of money flowing in the market for the right product.
- The right product for investors is almost always a proven model of something that already has worked in foreign markets. Like, AirBnB →OYO rooms, Amazon → Flipkart, Groupon → Coupon-Dunia, Uber → Ola, and many many more.
Almost all the products have been forked from their working and proven models from global markets. If there are any innovative or new ideas they barely get enough funding to reach their potential customers at scale. They all get buried deep into the ground for being innovative and for having an idea that isn’t proven to be working in any markets yet.
This is the major reason why the next Tesla, Google, or Facebook isn’t happening in India.
There is no lack of talent in Indian Markets, It might be hard to believe but, India produces one of the finest engineers in the global market. However, many leave the country because of a lack of compensation for their skills.
Balaji Viswanathan (பாலாஜி விஸ்வநாதன்) explained in great detail why and how Indian Government is to blame for throttling the startup growth negatively. I remember his team had to deal with Indian customs officers for their robotic parts imported from china. Which they couldn’t get in time for no apparent reason.
Aggregate and Advertise
Indian Entrepreneurs need to understand there’s no need to build yet another ‘Aggregate and Advertise’ model application and be happy about it. The majority of the people I talk to are building nothing but eventually the same business model and guess what?
Everyone already hates advertisements.
This model is clearly not sustainable for the long term and you’re good only as long as your ultimate goal is to build, scale, grow and exit by either selling it to one of the giants.
Only if Indian Entrepreneurs would take a moment to look outside this model and see the opportunities that lie elsewhere, we’d have far better and unique startups.
I admire Elon Musk for his creativity and for doing something very different yet successful products that aren’t based on aggregate and advertising models.
So, back to the question.
What do Indian Entrepreneurs actually need?
I think we need to learn to unlearn and think outside the same box everyone’s thinking in right now.
When you do that you unlock what is known as ‘the pot of gold’.
They need to evaluate their products before bringing them to their end users, and they can do that very easily by following the Delta 4 model, I will share a link at the bottom if anyone wants to learn more about Delta 4 model and wants to apply it in their startup.
I would like to end this rant by saying, India is a country with HUGE potential and people with access to the Internet and Mobile Banking.
This number is going nowhere but UP as 1/3rd of the Indian population is very young.
It’s very unlikely that people born in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, or even 2010s are going to stop using the internet in their lives.
This is where the opportunity exists.
India is a country with a lot of problems and thats a very good thing for absolutely any entrepreneur in the right state of their mind.
The huge challenge seems to be when you build anything that requires even a little bit of support from the government, like building your own Tesla, or any other project would require heavy support from the government and only if they would understand how much of a difference their support makes, we would’ve started to become a manufacturing hub like China, which is the backbone of any economy.
So, make something that would marginally make the existing state of the product or service better for the end user and if you do it right, you’d not need to rely on marketing to grow your product.
Don’t rush into getting your product out to as many customers as you can, start with 1000 beta testers, work on the feedback, refine, remodel, and make it better 100 times if required before bringing it to the market.
You sure won’t be disappointed.
Meanwhile, I can only hope our government is supportive of startups building physical products in India. whatever they’re currently doing is not helping startups to the extent which is needed.
Build Something better,
Pratik.
Edit:
For those who want to check Delta 4 and evaluate their startup or Idea, here’s the link:
https://pratikratnaparkhi.com/kunal-shahs-delta-4-theory-explained/
