There is a famous story about Bajaj Chetak. It is related to the social evil dowry. It is said that that was the time when the father of a new child used to go to the sweet shop if it was a boy. And, they would rush to the Bajaj showroom to book a Chetak scooter if it was a girl. As dowry was a must and waiting for Bajaj Chetak was a 18 year long wait.
There might be a little exaggeration in the above scenarios. But, it was before 1991, The period being called the license-raj, and the economy hardly grew.Before 1991, we had one car – ambassador, one scooter – Bajaj Chetak, one watch – HMT. And a similar status in other sectors. That era was called the license-raj. Companies in the manufacturing industry had to take a license to manufacture.
Another fact is that the owner of Bajaj got sued for manufacturing more units than he was permitted to do. This is the reason for the slow start of the Indian economy and why it still lags behind other countries.
Corporate India is only 28 years old. It has got maturity in some sectors. We do have many success stories. Still, a lot has to happen in different industries.
Recently, there is a massive interest among youth for startups.
What Is A Startup?
It is basically a young company that is just beginning to develop. Usually, the founder(s) have come up with a unique solution with a product (like a software or a physical product) or service for an existing problem. Or also to develop a better modus operandi for solving the same problem.
The Great Recession in 2008 caused businesses to reallocate their resources and lay off employees in large numbers. In India, it mostly affected the IT professionals, who grew extremely fearful for their jobs. This little fear, along with an insatiable aspiration to prove one’s mettle, shook the young nation. It didn’t take the countrymen long to break the shackles of mediocrity and rise above the challenge of creating their own solutions to solve the problems of our country.
Bangalore, known as the silicon valley of India boasts about 7700 startups, the third highest in the world. There’s tons of problems to be solved and there is a massive potential market right itself in India.
There were precisely three waves of Tech startups in India.
Wave 1 : Information Technology
The first wave of IT sector companies took place in the late ’80s with the likes of software services companies such as Infosys who are now global giants. Large conglomerates such as TATA and Wipro also launched their IT ventures.
WAVE 2 : The Dot Com Boom
This wave occurred after the dot com boom of the late 1990s, With consumer internet startups such as Naukri.com, Make my trip and Indiagames, and Shaadi.com as well as industry portals.
Wave 3 : The Broadband Boom
This is due to the recent mobile and broadband boom, especially the SMAC (Social, mobile, analytics, cloud). Success stories include Paytm, Flipkart, Snapdeal, redBus, Zomato, and a hundred others.
There is also a massive Foreign investment and interest in India.The total amounts to around 33.62 billion dollars since 2014.Though the investment is decreasing recently due to the rapid changes in government policies which might be hampering the ease to do business with foreign counterparts.
With one of the largest populations and consumer bases in the world, India has enough potential to be both producer and consumer, which means that Indian startups have a wide range of consumer classes, products and services, and business models to choose from. The future for startups does look promising!
This article has been written by Vignesh, an engineering student who’s curious about everything above and below the sun. An Engineer by the day and electronic musician by night.