So far India has often been referred to as the outsourcing hub of the world. Whether its high end technological development in fourth generation optical discs or back office credit card processing, Indians have always drawn the credit (or otherwise, if you want to argue). The world has been hyping over the various emerging technologies but silently & suddenly without much of cry we have reached to a new dimension in business; call it the Indian Start-up Culture.

And when you refer to the Indian startup ecosystem, technology has beaten all its competitors. The Indian start-up scenario is betting on developing software products in cloud, big data, mobility and social media with an inclination towards hardware as well. This has come at a point in time when we as a country have started to dream of products similar to Google or Microsoft. Soon this can be a new beginning to an era of technological advancements.

The Initiators:

The start-up culture is alternatively termed as “Garage Start-up”. And why not? Few of the initial trend setters have done the same. Be it the pharma heavy-weight Biocon or the newly formed Hashcube, a lot of these established Indian players have kicked off from the same place. Inspite of lack of potential funding, innovative ideas have always shown the path. Most of these ideas have been simple with a reach to the bigger section of the crowd. Take for example, the recent Facebook acquisition of Bangalore based start-up “Little Eye Labs”. The company which was founded in May 2012 by four technocrats - Giridhar Murthy, Kumar Rangarajan, Satyam Kandula and Lakshman Kakkirala, builds performance analysis and monitoring tools for mobile application developers. Another company Capillary Technologies which was incorporated in 2008 by three fellow IITians Aneesh Reddy, Krishna Mehra and Ajay Modani had quit their lucrative jobs and dreamt to start off their own tech firm.  Now the company employs more than 250 people across geographic locations in USA, Middle East, UK, Singapore, Australia, South Africa and even the Caribbean apart from India. Couple of years back the company has been highlighted in the Forbes India magazine.

Funding and Support:

Gone are the days when young entrepreneurs could set up their firms only when they had monetary backup. So, most of them dared not to dream big. The Indian business ecosystem has changed significantly over the past few years. If one has a great idea, finding investment is no more a nightmare. Venture capitalists like Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners, SAIF Partners and IDG Ventures (just a pie of the larger share) have contributed heavily to the recent trend. Apart from this, an industry body like NASSCOM or iSPIRT (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table) has been continuously working towards helping Indian new-borns to excel. Just days after iSPIRT was officially formed, the organization held meetings with M&A heads of large companies like Facebook, IBM, Ebay and Oracle. Late last year, the think-tank software product organization started mentoring start-up companies with plans to hold boot camps in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

The days ahead:

With the country owning a large number of successful business houses, the recent growth in Indian start-ups has not only contributed to house some great business ideas but has also created employment opportunities for a larger section of the society. Young, dynamic and creative people have started to think innovation which is different from following the traditional routes. This makes sense and the commitments should continue to sustain for a better business cause.

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