Indian StartUps And The Uphill Struggle They Seem To Face

Staring last year, the number of startups that have surfaced all over the country will impress anyone looking to India to invest. Everything from technology to food to groceries and beyond, there are enough and more startups to make India a growing country. But on the flip side, these startups are also closing shop just as fast. A new startup opens today and people are drawn to it, then in a week, more startups with the same idea open up and suddenly it becomes a trend. It’s a little difficult to maintain these startups when there are so many of them and it’s also clearly difficult to create and hold jobs within these startups.

In a recent story in Economic Times about the Economist India Summit, Kishore Biyani the CEO of Future Group said that startups are “hopeless” and that 90% of them “are not going anywhere”. While I don’t completely agree with Mr. Biyani, his sentiments aren’t too far off. “I think 90 per cent startups are not going anywhere. They are hopeless…In next three-four years revenues of these companies would not be more than Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 4,000 crore,” he added, which isn’t completely false, but is also a very negative way of looking at this. Granted, out of the 10 startups that open every day, maybe only 3 will survive and make it big, but it’s not completely fair to say that the revenue of these companies will fall to that amount.

When talking about the minds behind these startups, Mr. Biyani added, “Start up people should now think big, they should work on bigger canvas. All are very bright and talented people, so the canvas has to be larger.” The rest of Mr. Biyani’s statements have caused an uproar amongst people and not everyone agrees with him, which is also fine. He’s allowed to speak his mind and we’re allowed to ignore, disagree and vent about it.

But what could really be going wrong?

This isn’t a new topic, people world over have talked about this, discussed it and tried to find ways to explain this issue, but it’s not that easy. There are so many factors that go into a startup not succeeding the way they hoped. For one, if your startup isn’t a product that people will need or want, then it’s already a failure. Yes, there might be 100 people who will need your kind of brand, but not everyone is interested in the same thing. It needs to reach a broader audience. Which might be what Mr. Biyani means with the ‘bigger canvas’. The brand and the serve need to target at least half the country for it to make an impact.

Another reason could be the lack of interest from the people working on the brand. To launch a startup at the right time, people might just hire the first 10 applicants that walk in through the door and very often, those applicants aren’t really that enthusiastic and you’re left with a company that could go places, but doesn’t, because the employees aren’t half as interested as you are or as they should be. And sometimes, even the top executives can lose interest, therefore leading the brand away from what they really want to achieve.

If the company or the brand can’t provide something that separates them from their competition, then what’s the point? Having two companies that provide the exact same thing means that you get to pick or choose which one to use and invariably people end up using the first one, because they’ve been using that company all along. Companies are always so fast to launch their startups and get investments and fundings and build the company even further. But when the interest from other people starts to die, so does the company. There’s more to a company than just the investments that come in. It’s not always about the money. You need to build the brand from the ground up and be consistent and persistent and always put your best foot forward.

Learning from others mistakes is always a good way to go and of course, listening to advice from other people. This is just basic life lessons, because it’s what we’ve all been taught growing up. No matter how stubborn or difficult you are, advice is key in building an industry and becoming a person. It’s not always easy to take this advice and work with it, but turning away from it without even considering the possibility of it is not exactly right.

There have been tons of success stories this year, but there have also been quite a few failures and this number is only going to increase. While not all startups are shutting shop or being acquired, customers and partners are definitely starting to see something else and find a better way to handle the business themselves. I don’t know the first thing about setting up a startup or launching something of my own, but how can one just turn around and ignore that this is happening so often? There has to be a good reason why innovative ideas are gone before they even really get started.