India is a breeding ground for innovation and India is home to 24 Unicorns today, with the addition of seven new unicorns as of August 2019. According to Hurun Global Unicorn List 2019, India has emerged as third largest ecosystems for more successful start ups right behind China and US but ahead of Britain and Israel. Leading the pack from the country are payments solutions platform One97 Communications (USD 10 billion), cab aggregator Ola Cabs (USD 6 billion), online educator Byjus (USD 6 billion), and travel-stay finder OYO Rooms (USD 5 billion). The top 10 sectors that saw the rise of unicorns in India in the last 4 years are – Consumer Services, Automotive, Ecommerce, Enterprise Technology, Fintech, Healthtech, Logistics, Media & Entertainment and Transport Tech.
These billion dollar companies are not only coming out of Tier-1 cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi but also Tier-2 cities like Pune and Hyderabad, which have recently produced multiple unicorns.
As per the data released by Start-up Blink, India moved up to 17th position in 2019 from 37th spot last year in the Start-up Ecosystem Ranking. Globally India ranks 17 among 100 countries, based on the strength of its start-up ecosystem. To quote numbers, in 2010 there were only 1.8 k start-ups in India and at present, there are over 40K start-ups.
Start-ups have been receiving a lot of attention in recent years in almost every part of the globe. The number of start-ups has been increasing fast in India and there has been a growing support seen coming in all directions to help them grow. In fact, India is home to the world’s third largest start-up ecosystem, having added over 1,300 tech startups in 2019. Good news is that the number of India’s potential unicorns – startups valued at $1 billion – more than tripled from 15 last year to 52 in 2019, according to a report by NASSCOM.
Ecosystems are crucial for India’s entrepreneurial economy to thrive. We have few celebrities in the start-up eco-system including, Sachin and Binny Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati, and Ritesh Agarwal they have created a niche market in India and brought huge investments into the country and are remarkable. More than 76% of Indian executives pointed to India’s economic openness as a major business advantage, while 60% identified India’s skilled workforce and 57% of the executives said that India’s large domestic market provides significant advantages.
Startups are redefining the Indian economy by being the catalysts for technology innovation and collaboration. A good product idea and a strong technical team are not a guarantee of a sustainable business. One should not ignore the business process and issues of a company because it is not their job. It can eventually deprive them from any future in that company.
India has the third largest startup ecosystem in the world by securing nearly $14 billion in 2019 with several disruptive models, unique ideas and unicorn companies. This is despite the fact that several of these startups had novel ideas, some were receiving big investments and touted as high-potential startups, some were backed by the who’s who of the corporate world, yet they failed and were forced to shut down.
The lack of innovation and uniqueness only meant that the startups could not scale up and/or find sufficient investments. Investors and VCs believe that India is a follower market on certain fronts and that Indian startups need to leverage deep tech, top-notch tech talent and their creative problem-solving skills to solve for India and capitalize on the several available opportunities.
Another, reason of failure of business is the business and revenue models of the startup are critical in deciding its economic and commercial viability. One of the biggest mistakes that startups end up making is focusing too much on the solution and less on the business and revenue models. Inefficient and weak business and revenue models led to improper resource allocation, incorrect pricing, high cost to customer, low lifetime value to customer and so on.
Another solid reason is, several startups were forced to shut shop owing to their inability to raise sufficient investments or follow-on funding. This has been the case especially with startups in industries such as logistics and supply chain, social impact, clean energy, etc.
Lastly, another reason of companies fail is because they fail to develop a product that meets the market need. This can either be due to simple execution OR it can be a far more strategic problem, which is a failure to achieve Product or Market fit.
https://odishacorporatefoundation.org | Email- corporateindia.odisha@gmail.com
It was on October 2018, a group of Corporate Sector Professionals with Odisha connection gathered and planned to create a not for profit voluntary body to bring together all Odia worked/ working on both public and private Organization in India & aboard, and Odisha Corporate Foundation (OCF) to come into existence with registration of the same.
OCF is providing a platform for people of Odisha origin who are well placed in the corporate world in diverse sectors and capacities. Objective of OCF is to harness the power of Collective experience of Senior Corporate Executive through networking, to provide mentorship and help develop enterpreneual mindset in youth from Odisha.With the socio-economic changes around the world for the start up bandwagon, So far the Odiya talent which is well known with their academic prowess & hardworking capability in Corporate jobs is rightly poised to help the next generation to think differently by moving from a job seeker to job provider, and in turn paying back to Society with development of Odisha.
Objective of OCF
- Odisha Corporate Foundation (OCF) – as the name suggests is a platform for the people of Odisha origin from the corporate world (both private and Public) in diverse roles and capacity.
- The Principal objectives of OCF is to spur networking amongst the Odia’s in corporate sector to handhold, develop and mentor entrepreneurship in the youthof Odisha
- As Odisha is emerging as one of the favorable destination for the growth story of Indian economy by providing lot of political and Policy stability and the next gen Odisha needs to play a significant role in it.
- OCF intends to provide the necessary support through its resource base, guidance and initial incubation with the help of the corporate alliances and networking supports.
- OCF would like to work on the following areas:
- Spread awareness amongst educated youth starting from their B Schools/ Technological Institutions/ Universities about the startup &standup business .
- Comprehensive mentoring – help provide guidance, supports, linkages, counseling and allied activates to usher in conducive environment for “ Business Initiation” in the state enterprise space.
- The motto of OCF-is “ LEARN, EARN &PAYBACK to SOCIETY FOR DEVELOPMENT of ODISHA“
