The Death of Indian Innovation: Why Indian Start Ups are failing to Innovate?

Have been an entrepreneur since college days. Went full time on same idea and worked on it for a good 4 years full time before starting something new, raising some money, later pivoting (fucked up here) and eventually shutting shop last year. Life has been tough since then since there is no clarity on what to spend next 2-5 years on - acquisition offer falling apart, tried looking for jobs but didn't finalise and later did a bit of consulting (good pay but didn't really work out). I now have a few good conversations going on right now - leading product & EIR/Founders Office. What do you suggest would be an ideal thing to do? Profile - Solid Generalist. Non tech. Money ain't really an issue right now but can't stay dependent on savings for so long - its stupid. PS - If you or someone you know is hiring, please reach out. Happy exploring ideas as well.

Majority of Indian startups has toxic work culture and the same is not true for any US or Europe based startup. Indian startups just copy paste ideas from the west and apply it to Indian context. We don't have original product barring few such as Postman and all. Why is it so and how we can improve the situation?

Kya dikat hai bhai, udane do paisa. Tumhare thodi hai. Good firms genuinely perform well and return money. The ecosystem is not forgiving -- you don't survive very long if you don't create any big wins. It's an extremely high stress job with very little WLB. You do make money but it comes at a cost. Layoffs are sad but at least those jobs existed in the first place? They wouldn't without VC money. India's VC scene is extremely young and it'll take time before we produce a Google. Entrepreneurs are not always right, they are not always nice either; but they definitely are courageous.

Of late, with Koo shutting down, Unacademy in the rafters, I've seen really intelligent, logical folks stand behind the founders of such moronic companies. Is the act of building shit, money burning companies with no use , more important than not building something in today's time?

I am Thankful to the funding winter it has revealed true colors of so called Founders, who would not stop talking about culture, Growth, scale etc on Twitter and LinkedIn Take Byjus, for instance, they claim to be revolutionizing education, it's all a facade! All they care about is squeezing every penny out of parents' pockets. Putting large amount of people in debts they didn’t even signup for. And let's talk about Dukaan, shall we? The absolute 🤡 of a founder with zero empathy( 90% staff laidoff and the guts to project it as some AI ML innovation) These startup founders have lost touch with reality. They've become obsessed with valuation and funding rounds, completely forgetting the essence of why they started in the first place. It's all about becoming the next "unicorn" and impressing investors, while the customers and sellers are left in the dust. Gone are the days of genuine innovation and passion for solving real-world problems. It's all about the money now, and they don't care who gets hurt along the way. The startup ecosystem has become a rat race, with everyone trying to outdo each other and sacrificing ethics and integrity in the process. It's sad to see the true colors of these startup founders shining through, and it's high time we demand more transparency, accountability, and genuine value from these so-called "disruptors." Enough with the facade, At the end all these founders will get an exit with generational wealth, the employee and people who have built it will be left in Dust. My laanat to all such founders and company. May the boat sink and hopefully someday we have accountability in place for these people.

Absolutely sad to see the state of the startups, most of them. I am a founder myself, and this is a post with equal disappointment with myself as much as it is for anyone else who relates. Look at all these companies that have raised shit tons of capital, and now make a fraction of money that has been invested in them. The raised money is spent on outsized, non business sense making acquisition costs, only to keep repeating it till the tap runs dry. Then when all stakeholders get bored, the service quality plummets, the employees are fired and whole sectors are admonished as being bad. But, my question is, which sector where large sums of money was invested in early days have come out with flying colours. Fucking nothing ! Edtech, proptech, agritech, ecommerce etc. etc. etc. kuch bhi nahi. Is there any sector where a startup which has raised in the 100s of millions in the first 5 years have actually built a sustainable business at any scale ? Then scaling down, isse acha, scale slowly. The worst part of this whole drama, is pushing the innovation wheel backward and destroying customer sentiment. Isse acha, raise less money inititally, build slowly, and only scale when the market is ready. Artifical growth makes no sense, unless you have a treasure chest that shall never run out. Even in that case, spend the money on assets and not on random acquisition costs, direct or indirect. As founders, let's do better, nahi ?

India's unstoppable rise in tech and innovation makes the West's decline clear. Yet immigration number always baffles me - are we being shortsighted? 🤔

I might sound stupid here but please hear me out. The market is crowded with so many startups in every domain. Older startups are much more stable, on track to become profitable or are already profitable with a huge market share. Not to forget the legacy companies with deep pockets and years of R&D and experience. Along with the competition, funding is another major pain point now because of various reasons we all know of. Also, somewhere I feel we don't face a lot of burning problems we faced a few years back which gave birth to a lot of startups who were actually solving some problem. Most of the new age startups out there are not really solving any problem but just offering premium products or services targeting just the high earning individuals. Most of the new ideas are repetitive with no major differentiation or value add. Because of all these reasons, I feel we might see very few new startups in future let alone successful ones. Share your thoughts please!

The US is in its late stage capitalist phase, a ship that's going to sink for the next 50 years. If you're a young person there it doesn't make sense to work as hard as your Grandpa the reward on average isn't as great. India on the other hand is poised to become a great multi-trillion $ economy. Onto something huge. We're talking like 10x growth of the economy here. Start-ups that have made it like Razorpay, Swiggy, PayTM, even Cred, if they survive will be really huge as capital in the country, liquidity and lifestyles go up over the next 50 years. Be the capitalist, take the risks, make bets, work and stack up promotions and money. Don't join an Infosys and work 70 hours there, do it for a start up of any scale you believe is going to make it. Or better yet start your own.