Entrepreneurship in India

There is a palpable desire and great ambition amongst the entrepreneurs in India to build leading, global businesses. We have seen this vision executed in the services sectors where entrepreneurs have taken advantage of India's depth of educated talent to offer world-class services with consistent high quality, on time delivery and lower prices. The time has now come for this same vision to manifest itself in India's consumer sector with the creation of world-class consumer oriented companies with a reliance on technology to help scale the business.

India's sustained economic growth has helped develop a middle class that is educated, discerning and ready to consume. This translates into a vibrant and growing domestic market that is ready to be served by a new breed of technology-enabled consumer focused enterprises. As an early member and student of companies such as Google, Amazon and Netscape the opportunity to work with such budding entrepreneurs to develop businesses that can grow from serving an emerging domestic market to serving the global consumer will be both fun and exciting.

The following are some thoughts that can help entrepreneurs navigate the early stages of starting a business.

Understand the market

Entrepreneurs should be clear about the market space they are entering. Define the size of the market, the current competitors and any barriers to entry. Market sizing is often a difficult step in new industries as it can be hard to determine a figure that clearly states the size of the market. Entrepreneurs should build a "top down" as well as "bottoms up" model to understand the scale of the opportunity. A top down model estimates the overall size of the existing industry and then tries to estimate the portions of that market that can be served by the new offering. A bottoms up model, starts from the actual service offering and tries to estimate the number of consumers that will adopt the new service and therefore the revenues that will be generated. As you assess the market potential be sure to determine the competitive points of differentiation and articulate the clear benefits to the consumer. Try to identify technology based competitive differentiators.

Build your team around the consumer pain points

Clearly articulate the pain points. Entrepreneurs should be intimately familiar with the drivers in the industry, the consumer pain points and the trends that are influencing change within the sector. In order to thoroughly understand the sector, entrepreneurs should actively speak to people who work in the industry and perform a limited test with consumers to elicit their feedback. As you begin to understand the consumer value, use this data to build the product or service proposition. Ensure that you build the knowledge and expertise in your team to effectively address the consumer pain.

Vision without execution is worthless

Execution is key. While you may be able to size a market, articulate a vision and rally a team around an idea, day-to-day execution is what creates value. This is not a small or easy task and can often be an entrepreneur's biggest test of courage, commitment and conviction. Starting a business is not for the faint at heart. Entrepreneurs must define early and often the reasons why they believe they will be successful and continue to organize their team around the execution needs. That alone will help them attain their goals. As you go through these early stages of building the business obsess about the customer and ensure that your first customers are happy, and become strong word of mouth advocates of your proposition - it is always more expensive to try to win over a lost customer than it is to retain a customer.

Closing thoughts

Being an entrepreneur is a great opportunity to build something that impacts people's lives in a positive way. It provides you with a sense of freedom, accomplishment and an ability to control your own destiny. As you set out down this path remember to be passionate about your idea and focus on the details of execution. Keep your ego in check and manage your team through inspiration, not fear. As you bring people on in the early stages remember that the DNA of the founders is the DNA of the company, so pick your team carefully and set an example for all to follow.

We are very excited and proud to be in India and to play a role in building the next generation of leading global businesses.

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