Angels Everywhere
Innovation is language agnostic. There is as much innovation in regional pockets as there is in the urban landscape. By enabling local angels in every region, we can ensure investors are made aware of local problems that would encourage more entrepreneurs to come forward to solve these problems. Hence, it is important to cultivate, nurture and incubate grassroots innovation with a local angel system.
There is wealth in every pocket and the trick lies only in bringing it out. Some of the regional angels, whom I personally know, are now part of bigger angel networks. This is one way of bringing more angels into the ecosystem.
Tech the Leveller
Inefficiencies in every sector should be identified and technology should be introduced in the proper manner. While rural India should be able to access products and services in urban India easily, products made in rural India and the efficiencies associated with it should be brought into the urban markets.
Only Sustainable Business Models
Developed countries are built by entrepreneurs. We’ve a great opportunity to build the nation entrepreneurially. Companies should be built more on strong fundamentals and sound business models rather than discounts. Growth hacking is never going to be a sustainable model.
No Get Rich Quick Scheme
The current funding scenario is unfortunately bringing the wrong kind of investors into the startup landscape. Innovation is not a rabbit that can be pulled out of thin air. It is certainly going to take some time for innovation to bear fruit. My approach is very simple. Identify a potential winner, support the venture and wait for about five years. At the end of it, you will have a superstar entrepreneur in the making.
Accepting Failures
With more individuals taking to entrepreneurship, failure is now seen in a positive light. Nobody is clinging to or brooding over their past failures. Failed entrepreneurs are ready to start again or find a job. We have a lot of “serial entrepreneurs” now. I’m glad to see more acquihires.
Technology and Psychology
What can I dotcom for you? That was the popular slogan of the early 2000s in the US. That was the time of the e-commerce boom.
But it has taken e-commerce 15 years to emerge big in India. People are now happy to buy tangible goods without the touch-and-feel experience. It is said that COD (cash on delivery) is one of the primary reasons for the change in consumer behaviour.
This is interesting, because COD has been used by India Post for years; it was called VPP (Value Payable Post). So understanding the consumer’s psychology before thinking of the technology is important.
Today we see that the concept of shared economy is popular in the US. There is a green thinking springing from the guilt pangs of over-consumption.
However, in India we have an aspiring middle class. One of my employees bought a car with his first salary and 80% of this salary went into paying the EMI. This person will not share his car to save Rs100, as may happen in the US. In the US, there are 800 cars for every 1000 individuals, and here it is 30 per 1000. So it might take some time for the concept of shared economy to catch up here.
An angel investor and a member of the Indian Angel Network (IAN), Nagaraja Prakasam’s focus is tech-enabled social ventures that cater to the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP). He is also founder chairman of Native Angels Network (NAN) promoted by Nativelead Foundation (NLF), enablings entrepreneurship in tier II and tier III regions. Prakasam has invested in several startups including Uniphore, an Indian language speech recognition solutions firm, Freshworld, a farm-to-home vegetable and fruit retailing startup and GoCoOp, an online marketplace for co-operative societies. He is also mentor-in-residence at NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore, and board member of Action For India.
(As told to principal correspondent Vijayakumar Pitchiah)