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India
Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: Lack of Role Models
Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.
Another refrain that we hear a lot is the lack of role models.
Role models help. No question.
You know who is one of my role models?
>>>577th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Chandrashekar Kupperi, Peaceful Progress Fund
Chandrashekar Kupperi is General Partner at Peaceful Progress Fund, an angel fund in India. We have some very interesting discussions on consumer startups in India, especially the ones targeting lower economic strata consumers.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You said many times that the ecosystem is still immature. Can you underscore the points where you see the Indian ecosystem needing maturity?
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: Sometimes, it’s the unrealistic expectation on the part of entrepreneurs partly because they don’t understand the grind that startups need to go through. A lot of the diet they’re fed on is the Silicon Valley success stories or the Indian success stories. They don’t understand the emotional angst they need to go through.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: It’s wonderful to exchange notes. There are a couple of things you’ve said that I want to underscore. One is the importance of failure. The Indian ecosystem didn’t accept failures for a long time. It’s a cultural change where it’s okay to fail. You’re not penalized.
A very long time ago when I was a young entrepreneur, I talked to a lot of investors all the time. They would say, “We love entrepreneurs who have failed once and are doing it again.” This is deeply underappreciated.
Somebody who has tried it once and failed has already done a lot of learning on somebody else’s dime. It’s a prized commodity for investors.
>>>Somebody who has tried it once and failed has already done a lot of learning on somebody else’s dime. It’s a prized commodity for investors.
Sramana Mitra
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s take those two sectors – SaaS and the fintech sectors. In SaaS, the metric is MRR. Do you have a particular metric that you measure by when you’re doing your SaaS investments?
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: No, numbers can be easily gamed, and they are often not necessarily representative. As long as the entrepreneur has a plausible story and he can convince us, we’re more than happy to look at these investments.
>>>10 More Indian Unicorns
We previously analyzed 10 Indian Unicorns. Many are unjustifiably overvalued, some are not. However, if the founders can keep their heads straight and execute, thereby back-filling the valuations, invaluable infrastructure could get built in sector after sector.
Here are 10 more:
19 Udemy Courses on How To Build a Startup in India
There are now thousands of entrepreneurs in India, and many more Indians are starting their own businesses as we speak. Even with mistakes, disappointments, and setbacks, all things considered, startup founders continue to want to realize their ambitions, no matter what.
>>>Best of Bootstrapping: ADDA Co-founder CEO Bootstrapped with a Paycheck in India
If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.
Sangeeta (San) Banerjee is the Co-founder and CEO of ADDA, formerly ApartmentADDA.com, an Indian web application company. She holds a degree in electrical engineering from Guindy and earned her master’s from Louisiana State University. Prior to founding ApartmentADDA, she worked for Tata Consultancy Services from 1999 to 2003 and then went on to postgraduate education. After graduating from Louisiana State University she worked for Capgemini in Chicago for a year before returning to India to work for SAP India.
Sramana Mitra: Sangeeta, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from, and what were the circumstances of your childhood?
San Banerjee: I am from Kolkata. I grew up in a very conservative environment. Where I was from, girls were not supposed to ride a bicycle. I went to school on the other end of the city, and I commuted to school by myself. I would ride a bicycle to a ferry, then once on the other side of the river I would take a bus to school. Many people felt that my parents were careless with their daughter’s safety, but my parents really wanted me to be self-sufficient. They wanted me to know how to take care of myself. My belief that I can do anything I want to stems from my parents. I used to face a lot of ridicule for riding a bicycle. They would tell me to stay off the road and tell me to keep my cycle on the playground.
