Never mind the recession. In India, entrepreneurial energy has continued to grow. It still exists only in small pockets. And the sophistication of the entrepreneurial ecosystem has a long way to go before it can resemble anything like Silicon Valley--or even Israel. In this evolution, the Indian media has an important role to play.
I have been interacting closely with Indian entrepreneurs for the last five years and have watched a clear movement forward. The greatest momentum is in the under-30 population. This generation has little to lose, unlike its established counterparts who have cushy jobs and big salaries at large multinationals. The former is high on risk-taking, low on experience, while for the latter, the opportunity cost of foregoing a big salary is a monumental barrier.
The under-30 group looks incredibly promising. They are drumming up entrepreneurship journals in colleges and dreaming up companies in their dorm rooms. This population needs help on several accounts, especially with education and role models. Here is where the media can help.
The first great opportunity for the Indian media is to document and highlight this entrepreneurial culture. India celebrates two kinds of heroes: Bollywood and cricket. To this should be added the entrepreneur. Here, let me distinguish between the old-line Tatas and the Ambanis versus the entrepreneur who creates something out of nothing. The heirs of Reliance, Tata or Essar are simply not the kind of role models that inspire anybody. To be sure, Dhirubhai Ambani (founder of conglomerate Reliance Industries) and Jamsetji Tata (founder of conglomerate Tata Group) are role models, but they are somewhat dated. Narayana Murthy, cofounder and former CEO of Infosys Technologies, served as a great role model for two decades to entrepreneurs who leaped into the outsourcing bonanza. But Murthy, too, is somewhat dated, since outsourcing is not necessarily what will build India's future.
So who are the right role models for Indian youth today?
The Indian media should focus on entrepreneurs who are building $5 million, $10 million, $50 million and $100 million companies from scratch.
A story that has profoundly inspired me is that of Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, who has built an insanely profitable, rapidly growing $60 million company with zero outside financing. He is taking on giants like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Vembu has eight people in Silicon Valley and over a thousand in Chennai. Other than a small “storefront” in Silicon Valley, his is an Indian company. Vembu can become the archetype on which young Indian entrepreneurs can model themselves. We need many more like him.
The media needs to tell these entrepreneurs' stories--the human stories of their triumphs and heartbreaks--and make them into household names, in the same way they delivered cricket stars Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly and actor Hrithik Roshan into the depths of Indian homes.
In Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs is one such household name. If he sneezes, the media reports on it. As a result, hundreds, possibly thousands, of entrepreneurs have looked up to him and found inspiration.
Many other entrepreneur heroes have emerged in Silicon Valley and across America, and their stories have traveled far and wide. The media has celebrated them, and to a very large extent, all these stories--not only billionaires like Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tom Siebel or Larry Ellison, but also numerous smaller successes--have helped create the culture that we enjoy here. This culture forgives failure, focusing not on the defeat, but celebrating the attempt.
Through its storytelling, the Indian media should simulate this culture of risk-taking. It will need to teach the Indian population to celebrate those among its youth who will swing for the fences, recognizing that some will fail. Many will fail, but that's okay. As a culture, India will need to learn to forgive failure and give people a second, third, fourth chance.
The Indian media will also need to highlight stories of the sacrifices, struggles and triumphs of the men and women who stand by their entrepreneurs--the parents, the wives, the husbands. Fathers who refuse to marry their daughters to entrepreneurs deserve ridicule in these stories, since young men with entrepreneurial dreams often face similar ridicule. Do they deserve it? No!
But the Indian media should avoid a mistake made here. In America, the media has fed a frenzy around venture capital. Who raises how much money from VCs is a benchmark of success. This is a false metric.
Why? Which entrepreneur makes more money? A 90% owner of a $5 million company sold for $25 million? Or a 5% owner of $25 million company sold for $100 million? The former, most likely, has bootstrapped his business. The latter, for sure, has raised tons of venture money. Yet entrepreneurs, unfortunately, keep chasing venture capital and treat funding as a measure of success.
Venture capital is a tool of entrepreneurship but just one of many tools. It is neither sexy nor smart to focus all your energy on raising capital. That energy should be focused instead on building a business, selling your products.
Friends and colleagues in the Indian media, you are in a position to make a tremendous impact on the country's development. The entrepreneurial energy that we will unlock today will build, perhaps, another ecosystem like Silicon Valley--one that innovates, builds and creates time and again.
And perhaps, this force that you unleash will not only impact the country but will impact the world for, God knows, today's world economy is in equally dire need of entrepreneurship.
Source: Forbes
