Do More Faster India. Brad Feld
how world‐class teams are hired and nurtured. Indian entrepreneurs absorbed all the knowledge they could and digested every blog post, book, and podcast on how startups are built. Most importantly, our entrepreneurs have the vision, courage, and tenacity to believe that they can build seminal, transformative technologies and teams and turn those into world‐leading companies.
The founding teams in India will bring a new age of technology entrepreneurship fueled by two massive opportunities. For the first opportunity, Indian entrepreneurs will focus on digitally transforming countless markets within India alone. With a rapidly growing consumer market the demand for new products and services will skyrocket. And with increasing purchasing power of Indian consumers, the digitization opportunities in large markets like healthcare, shipping, logistics, retail, and manufacturing are poised to become a consumption engine for homegrown innovation and disruption.
The size and socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural complexity of India makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a non‐Indian team to understand local needs and build successful startup businesses that cater to the Indian market. The time is ripe for Indian entrepreneurs to build, scale, and create significant enterprise value by just focusing on the Indian customer.
The second opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs is to become competitive in global markets. In addition to now having world‐class product‐talent, the growth of cloud and SaaS tools allows Indian entrepreneurs to service, support, market, and sell to customers anywhere in the world. At the same time, the lower cost basis of building and supporting products from India enables Indian startups to deliver industry‐leading solutions at disruptive price points.
I expect the startup revolution in India to happen quickly, but entrepreneurs need access to local and global talent, capital, customers, partners, mentors, fellow founders, universities, government, and other service providers who can help them. I personally saw Techstars bring all these ingredients together in Boston and they helped rejuvenate Boston’s startup ecosystem in a short period of time. In less than 10 years, Techstars Boston has accelerated over 175 startups with a 1,000+‐strong mentor network, creating over 3,000 jobs and raising over $1 billion in capital, leading to more than 30 exits already. This ecosystem is now self‐propagating and it is paying it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs. I believe Techstars can do the same thing across numerous cities in India, and founders all across the country will benefit from this transformation.
I used to dream of an India where technology innovation and disruption could bring value to over a billion people, create millions of jobs, unlock thousands of crores of rupees in new economic value, and move the country forward for the better. After my Techstars experience I know that dream can become a reality. I want to live in that world. I believe we can, and we will.
Sravish Sridhar Founder/CEO, Kinvey Techstars Boston 2011 Boston, Massachusetts August 2019
Do More Faster India
David Cohen and Brad Feld
David is Managing Partner of Techstars and Brad is Managing Partner of Foundry Group.
When we started Techstars in 2006 we were focused on helping entrepreneurs succeed in one location, Boulder, Colorado. Do More Faster was first published in 2011 and this newly revised edition will appear in 2019. Since our founding, Techstars has grown to become the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. We scaled Startup Week, Startup Weekend, and Startup Accelerators that collectively have created tens of billions of dollars in value and tens of thousands of jobs. Startup Weekend takes place in 630 cities in 110 countries with over 70,000 attendees annually. Startup Week is provided in 147 cities in 16 countries with over 100,000 participants annually. And our three‐month Startup Accelerators operate in more than 30 cities in 15 countries and have helped more than 1,700 companies.
Meanwhile, India has witnessed a remarkable transformation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in that same time frame. In 2005, PayTM started, followed by Flipkart and Inmobi in 2007. Quikr and Yourstory emerged in 2008, MobiKwik and Mydala in 2009, and Ola Cabs, Freshworks, and Snapdeal in 2010. Multiple other startups, like Big Basket and Delhivery, have followed and since 2005, 18 Indian startups reached valuations over $1 billion. Flipkart was purchased by Walmart for $16 billion in 2018, marking the first major exit of an Indian startup.
This list barely scratches the surface of the vibrancy of India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and we believe that thousands, millions, or tens of millions of Indians with an idea will be creating startups. Many will fail, of course, but we believe the lessons in this book, tested and repeated over a decade, will help startup founders understand what has worked for others and apply those learnings to their own situation.
We believe Techstars can make a significant contribution to the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. We have found that by helping entrepreneurs we also help increase employment opportunities and that helps people and communities provide more services and benefits to others. The vast population of India means that Techstars can indirectly impact hundreds of millions of people and communities and elevate the standard of living for many people.
We have also experienced firsthand the incredibly high levels of technical expertise in India, and in fact the technical skills of Indian engineers, computer software developers, and others surpass the levels of skill in other parts of the world. But because of the complexity and diversity of India, the ability to turn superior technologies into marketable products, to develop business models that align with the market, is daunting. That’s where this book and our accelerators come in. The chapters in Do More Faster India highlight the experiences of diverse people who have either participated in our Techstars accelerator program or been a mentor to the program. Some of these people have been wildly successful while others have failed. We think readers can learn something important from both the successful and unsuccessful people. And our hope is that the lessons in this book will motivate entrepreneurs to develop networks and communities and seek out mentors to catalyze India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The challenges in India are significant and unlike any other country in the world. But for Techstars, India is not just one country with limited influence. With its scale, diversity, and constraints, India is a crucible and gateway for five billion people living in emerging economies. The ideas developed in Do More Faster India will work well in other parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Techstars believes that entrepreneurs create the future, and the future is truly one global family.
Why Entrepreneurs in India Need Techstars
Bala Girisaballa
Bala is president of Techstars India.
The year 2018 was a time of many firsts for the Indian startup ecosystem. A large startup (Flipkart) was purchased for $16 billion by a major corporation (Walmart). India’s homegrown digital payments platform called UPI (Unified Payment Interface), which was launched just two years ago, surpassed American Express’s 500 million global transactions volume.
It’s not surprising that India currently leads in globalization. India‐based companies build technology for leading multinationals across the world and our technology exports alone exceed $126 billion. In 2018, technology contributed 5 percent of India’s $2.5 trillion Gross Domestic Product. Last year, India‐based companies received over $25 billion of investments from venture capitalists and private equity firms. Today, as a result of our educated labor force (three million graduates with one million engineers annually) over 1,200 global corporations have operations in India to leverage the depth and breadth of our technical talent. The investments in technology and substantial employment opportunities with global corporations have provided Indian entrepreneurs experience and exposure to global markets.
The milestones that mark 2018 are ones that I would not have predicted 10 years ago. When I returned to India after working in technology in the United States in 2007, I created a startup. At that time, you could