10 (Tongue-in-cheek) Reasons Why India Can’t Build The Next Apple Or Google

​Eric Schmidt has made us proud. By saying India’s entrepreneurial innovators have the potential to build the “next Google” if the country “plays its cards right” and ensures Internet access for millions of its citizens. His statement came in an essay written for the book Reimagining India: Unlocking The Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower, edited by the global consulting firm McKinsey.

According to the former Google CEO and currently the executive chairman, he has witnessed the creative potential of India’s people all around him in Silicon Valley where India-born entrepreneurs account for 40% of the start-ups. “Just think what will happen when India’s entrepreneurial innovators are able to create great global companies without leaving their country. They will change the world. Hundreds of large firms focused on the Internet will be founded and will succeed by focusing purely on Indian consumers, Indian taste, Indian style, Indian sports.

“Can anyone of those companies ultimately become the next Google? Of course.”

He then goes on to elaborate all the right ‘technology’ measures India should take to make it happen. But unknown to him, a war of words has already started on the Indian shores. In a Live Chat on LinkedIn, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and managing director of Biocon, a global biopharma enterprise, has pointed out the pitfalls that entrepreneurs and start-ups often face in India. While the debate rages, we bring you a tongue-in-cheek look at what’s hindering the future Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerbergs and even the Sheryl Sandbergs and Marissa Mayers of India.

Student start-up… OMG!
That’s a strict no-no, if you are in a premier institution and spent lakhs in admission fees. Don’t waste your time and let your grades fall – that’s the bottom line. Business can wait, your career can’t. If you are trying to hit back with the lessons learnt from Aamir Khan-starrer Three Idiots (a movie passionate about following the path your heart wants to go), let’s tell you dude, that’s just plain filmy.

Get a job first; your family has some expectations.
Understandable, if you are from a middle-income family with loads of burden. Your kid brother needs education, as good as you had. You need to marry off your sister (again, refer to the above movie). What about buying a home (after all, mom and pop stayed in shabby, rented places all their life)? If you are a woman, your family could be sitting in a dharna when you try to move out and start something on your own. Have a job, get married, settle down – that’s the clear career graph for you.

Work, ugh! We are a clan of dreamers.
Well, we are not saying that, but an ad campaign did it pretty smartly. The entire display board was smudged with a beautiful shade of blue with just a small green spot at one corner. And the text read: Blue: Dreamer; Green: Doer. Need we say more? Entrepreneurship is mostly hard work, tough work, fraught with risks. So it’s no wonder that the green spot appears so miniscule.

Sure, come back for the money when you’re the next Apple.
If you have overcome the first three hurdles, chances are you are not a trust fund and need plenty of seed money to start up your idea. Well, venture funding in India, or any funding for that matter, has poor risk appetite. They don’t mind putting in some dough when it comes to Series A, provided you show them good traction and a sound exit route. But if you are a greenhorn out of college and trying to walk in with an idea, you can walk out again. Incubators across the country could be the only hope for you, but the competition is very, very stiff there – as stiff as landing a decent job.

Want to start up? Give us your pound of flesh.
This input comes straight from an IIT passout who tried to set up his first solar power project in South Bengal. Even after a year, the venture is stranded mid-way, permissions are pending and red tape rules supreme. It’s still not certain how much persuasion, influence or other incentives will be required to get out of the logjam but in the meantime, the bootstrapped firm is fast running out of cash. If that is the price of starting up here, it is no wonder that potential entrepreneurs give it a wide berth.

What innovation? Have you applied for a patent?
That’s a real problem, to be sure. Very few Indian start-ups have the R&D fund or the inclination to step into uncharted territories. And a recent chat with a start-up focused venture capitalist further validated the point. According to him, most tech start-ups try and focus on the service side of things or at the most, customise tech platforms to meet their requirements. As for creating something as huge as Apple, Google or Facebook, we simply lack the bandwidth. Are the start-ups in non-IT or non-Internet space (for instance, pharma) doing any better? Not really, as very few private organisations are ready to back up risky bets.

If innovations are out, let’s do what we do best – copycating.
Majority of the Indian start-ups do just that to survive. Most of the concepts and business models introduced in the US are closely followed here and seem to be making good money. Both Amazon and Groupon have their India competitions (we prefer not to name any name as this piece is done in jest) for a long time, which shows we are quick to follow good ideas but not quick enough to churn out something ahead of others.

‘No-transparency’ is in, but that does hurt business.
We are not taking sides here, but most will remember the ugly showdown between Lilliput Kidswear and its PE investors – Bain Capital and TPG Capital. The PE firms took the company to court over alleged accounting fraud. The same thing seems to be happening to home-grown kids’ wear retailer Catmoss as PE investor SAIF Partners alleged that the company was selling its assets, doctoring its books and fudging meeting minutes. Then there is the painful case of Timtara.com, the controversial e-commerce portal who allegedly failed to deliver and shut shop when its promoters were arrested. If integrity is the first casualty, nothing can buy a business a fresh lease of life.

Snif… Snif… I don’t want to be your co-founder.
Nothing can cure that holier-than-thou attitude that ails most start-up founders. And the result is a painful walkout by key people – right from co-founders to senior executives. Oh yes, most of them are sweet about it, saying they need to start all over again and would love to get a kick out of their new assignments. But then, people like Bal Krishn Birla, co-founder of the online hypermarket ZopNow.com, complain openly about being wrongly ousted from their own companies. That kind of conflict might remind you of Steve Jobs but it’s hardly an ideal situation for an early-stage business to thrive upon.

Can’t wait to sell, if you give us a million-dollar deal.
That’s the exit line for most of the start-ups and investors are only too happy to go with the flow. Well, that’s not exactly what Snapchat is doing right now (it has refused a $3 billion offer from the mighty Facebook) or what WhatsApp did a year ago. But then, ventures at home are always in a hurry to get over with it if they can and walk away with a tidy sum. Of course, that is sound business sense but it hardly helps growth at a global level. Patience pays at times and Twitter, once a no-revenue company, has proved it by going for a really huge IPO. If we can’t wait to attain the scale and size that will start gaining us global visibility, India is not likely to produce the next Apple or Google in near-term.