This essay, previously unpublished, was originally written in February 2024.
I was walking down a lane in the tony neighbourhood of Koramangala 3rd Block in Bengaluru. Amidst the usual advertisements offering shared accommodation for students and broadband connections, a printed notice pasted on a street lamp caught my attention – “Looking for a co-founder for a Web3 startup”. In any other city, this would have been unexpected, but then this is India’s startup capital – Bengaluru, and Koramangala, the Ground Zero of tech startups. Startups are so much the norm in Koramangala that years ago, I remember PVR Cinemas at Forum Mall showing an advertisement for IBM Rational Rose XDE (an eXtended Development Environment popular with software developers working with startups back then) before the movie.
Koramangala was non-existent when the founding father of Bengaluru, Nadaprabhu Kempe Gowda, laid the foundation of the city after declaring independence from the Vijayanagara Empire in 1537. Post-independence, the neighbourhood started to be developed as a planned neighbourhood, and by the late 1990s, the area started to be favoured by some tech companies. Perhaps one could say that the startup community’s love story with Koramangala really began with Flipkart, which was founded out of a two-bedroom flat in the National Games Village, situated in this neighbourhood. Now, Koramangala is home to a number of unicorns and startups that are household names – Swiggy, Instamojo, InMobi, Ola and Newshunt, to name a few.
In 2011, the mobile advertising startup, InMobi, became India’s first unicorn – a name given to startups that are valued at $1 billion. In 2022, the neobank Open became India’s 100th unicorn. Despite the funding winter in 2023, India has about 115 unicorns as of September 2023.
And not just unicorns, India is at the top of the list when it comes to the other animals in the startup world as well. There are quite a few of them – gazelles, cheetahs, zebras, camels, and more. Gazelles are startups founded after the year 2000 and are valued between half a billion and a billion dollars and are tipped to turn into unicorns within three years. Cheetahs are startups that sit at a valuation of between $200 million and $500 million and are expected to turn into unicorns within five years. A camel is a startup that is similar to a cheetah or a gazelle in that its end goal is to embrace venture capital and turn into a unicorn eventually, however, unlike the high cash-burn and loss-making models that they employ, camels take a sturdier, albeit slower path to growth. A camel chases profitability from the get-go, and is, therefore, more resilient to market volatility and capital flights than the other startup animals. And it is this resilience that gives camels their name – these animals are perfectly suited to thrive in funding winters and the challenging deserts where venture capital funds are hard to come by.
According to the ASK Private Wealth Hurun India Future Unicorn Index 2023, India’s future unicorns are worth $57 billion, with 51 gazelles and 96 cheetahs. In terms of future unicorns, India is third in the world, behind the USA and China, who together, boast of over two-thirds of the world’s startup cheetahs and gazelles. As an interesting aside, among the unicorns in the USA, 44% were founded by first-generation immigrant founders, and no prizes for guessing which country supplied the most unicorn founders to the USA – it was none other than India!
How did India get to this kind of pole position in the startup world? The people of this country have always been entrepreneurial, but to succeed in the startup jungle is a different ballgame altogether. Several factors have led to this meteoric rise to India’s startup stardom over the last decade or so, ranging from the overall economic factors to the creation of an array of digital public goods, coupled with the availability of talent, access to capital, and of course, the thrust from the government through schemes such as Startup India. A combination of these has propelled India to the third spot globally, in terms of the largest startup ecosystem, growing consistently at about 12-15% year-on-year.
Not just the numbers, but the breadth of the startups is also impressive. Startups in India span 56 industry sectors, with IT leading the pack, unsurprisingly, but healthcare, life sciences and education are not too far behind either.
The massive Indian economy offers a great opportunity to foster startups. At $3740 billion, India’s nominal GDP is 5th largest in the world. With a growth rate of around 6% during the FY2023-24, India’s GDP growth rate has been the fastest among the large economies in the world, far outpacing the growth rate of the established ones such as the USA, Japan, the EU, and is even ahead of China. If global economic conditions improve, India’s GDP could grow well over 7% in the next few years.
The scorching economic growth in India, since the economic reforms initiated in 1991, has pulled millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. Between 2011-12 and 2022-23, in just over a decade, the gross national income per capita has expanded 2.7 times, from Rupees 70980 to Rupees 193044, both at current prices. With the rise in incomes, there has been a corresponding rise in purchasing power, and with more education and greater awareness, there has been a more than corresponding increase in the aspirations of the people.
Some years ago, one the sidelines of a tech conference, I met a successful entrepreneur who was then working at his third startup, with both of his previous companies sold at lucrative valuations. One would imagine, his two successful exits would lend his sufficient credibility, but what he told me filled me with both amazement and amusement. He said that despite what he has achieved as an entrepreneur, people really sit up and notice when they hear something that he had achieved over two decades ago – graduating from one of the best IITs in India. Over the last several years, IITians have consistently produced successful startups, many of which have even turned unicorns. Over 60% of Indian unicorn startups have at least one IIT alum as a co-founder. IIT Delhi alone has produced 27 unicorns, including the e-commerce giant, Flipkart, whose co-founders Sachin Bansal and Mukesh Bansal who entered the institute one year apart.
A key strength of IITs is its alumni network. For startups founded by IITians, this solves the problem of filling key positions early on in the startup’s life. Soon after Flipkart was founded, Sachin Bansal called many of his former classmates at IIT Delhi asking if they would be willing to join his startup that sold books. These early hires went on to become key executives at Flipkart.
Since 2014 alone, India has added seven new IITs, taking the total to 23. Along with this growth in the number of institutes, the IITs have also consistently risen in world rankings. In the 2024 edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds World University rankings, is at the 149th position globally, up from 172 the previous year.
Another pertinent characteristic of the Indian market is the unique demography where the majority of the population is young. This segment is educated, and their awareness and aspirations are higher than they have ever been in this country. India has about 440 million ‘millennials’ – a term used to denote people born between the early 1980s and late 1990s – comprising 34% of the country’s population. This is significantly higher than the global share of the millennial population, which is just at 23%.
But why is this cohort so significant in the context of the Indian economy? The millennial population have huge ambitions, and they also have the ability to spend. The millennials have adopted a digital-first life, spending more than 17 hours online per week, on an average. This makes the millennial cohort a natural target for the tech-first startups.
The millennials as well as the Gen Z cohort, which are together expected to make up over 50% of India’s population, are more than willing to spend on consumption, be it personal grooming, healthy eating, or even luxury products. This cohort is also saving lesser than ever, with an average saving of less than 10% of their monthly income. That means, there is a great appetite for credit, especially small and short-term. All of these characteristics offer themselves as areas of opportunity for startups.
Besides the major shifts in the economy, there has been tremendous progress in technology as well. The internet boom has been nothing short of a blockbuster boom in India. Globally, India stands second, just after China, both in terms of the number of mobile phone subscribers and mobile data traffic. An average subscriber in India currently consumes close to 20GB of mobile data per month, as per the Nokia Mobile Broadband Index, and this number is likely to rise to an astounding 62GB per month by 2028, pulling far ahead of all other markets globally.
Besides the connectivity, a set of India-specific technologies, cumulatively called the India Stack, have also been a huge contributor to the rise of startups. The word ‘stack’ here refers to a set of loosely interconnected technologies that can be coupled together via a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to deliver a final solution at scale. A stack of such digital solutions for India is called the India Stack. The strength of this tech stack lies in its unparalleled adoption by a large population, leading to a reduction in the cost of doing business as well as levelling the playing field through formalisation of the economy. This opens up tremendous opportunities for startups to innovate and move nimbly.
Take digital payments, for example, where India is the undisputed leader in the world. In 2022, 46% of the world’s realtime payments happened in India, which is more than the combined total of the next four countries. The technology that has catapulted India to this pole position is the Unified Payment Interface, or UPI, as it is widely known.
UPI was launched in 2016, and by October that year, there were 26 banks the UPI network, and there were over 100,000 transactions amounting to Rupees 485.7 million. The very next month, at 8 pm on November 8, the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, made a surprise announcement on national television – the demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 currency notes. While the move had economic repercussions in the short term, it set the pace of the adoption of digital payments on fire, and suddenly, mobile QR code based payments were everywhere, and words like PayTM, PhonePe, QR, scanner were commonplace. The smallest of vendors on the streets started accepting digital payments. About a week after demonetisation was announced, I remember printing QR codes at home and sticking them on stiff cardboard sheets for a vegetable seller, a milk vendor, and a pakoda seller to get them started on their digital payments journey. Today, all three of them have the electronic speakers that put out audible announcements of the payments received. Each time I visit them and I hear that familiar voice announcing a receipt, I cannot help but smile to myself.
The adoption that started with the demonetisation exercise, got further accelerated by the pandemic when contactless payments and physical distancing became mantras to live by, leading people to shun cash and adopt digital payment modes. Cut to September 2023, seven years since the day it was launched, UPI now had 492 banks working with it, and there were a staggering 10.5 billion UPI transactions amounting to 15.8 trillion Rupees. All in one calendar month!
A few different things contributed to this explosive uptake of UPI. one is the smartphone penetration and the widespread availability of fast 4G networks along with extremely competitive data tariffs. Another major contributor and this is perhaps the biggest one of all, is the digital authentication via Aadhaar – an enormous digital identity warehouse of 1.35 billion Indians that forms the backbone of the massively scalable, open, and extremely cost-effective India Stack. The wheels of the fintech machinery is greased by reliable customer authentication, and with Aadhaar as the foundation of India’s digital public goods infrastructure, the costs of this authentication at scale has plummeted. Banks using Aadhaar-based e-KYC for digital customer authentication have been able to bring down their costs of compliance from $12 per customer to a mere 6 cents, according to the World Bank estimates.
Over the last decade or so, thanks to the media coverage of successful startup fundraises and blockbuster exits, the perception of people towards startups and careers in startups has generally been positive. From a time when being an entrepreneur was a euphemism for being unemployed to an entrepreneur being a glamorous and sought-after career path, there has been a sea change in the Indian psyche. Many successful startup founders in India are from prestigious educational institutions such as the various Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management. Many gave up cushy careers in prestigious multinational companies before going on to become entrepreneurs. Hugely popular reality TV shows such as Shark Tank have only strengthened the appeal of startups.
Perhaps the most important factor in encouraging the startup boom in India is the political will that the government has displayed. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014, he put digital transformation at the heart of his government’s development agenda. His government’s focus on entrepreneurship was clear right at the beginning, when during the Cabinet formation, the new Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) was announced. Months after taking office, Prime Minister Modi announced the Make in India initiative, aimed at attracting investment and spurring innovation to turn India into a manufacturing hub for the world.
The push from the government specifically towards startups began on Independence Day, 2015 when Prime Minister Modi announced the Startup India initiative from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The initiative was launched in January 2016, with the aim to support entrepreneurs in three main areas – business process simplification and handholding through compliance measures, funding and incentivisation, and incubation and creating networks of industry-academia partnerships. The Startup India initiative is managed by a dedicated team under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), which comes under the umbrella of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Over 96,000 startups have been registered under the Startup India initiative.
In April 2015, the government launched the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) in order to make it easy for non-farm micro-entrepreneurs to access collateral-free micro-loans of upto 10 lakh Rupees. The MUDRA scheme was aimed at financial inclusion and to bring micro-entrepreneurs, who would otherwise have sought credit from private moneylenders at eye-popping interest rates, under the formal financial system. As of April 2023, more than 408 million loans amounting to over 23 trillion Rupees have been disbursed under MUDRA.
In 2015, the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) launched A Scheme for Promotion of Innovation, Rural Industries & Entrepreneurship (ASPIRE), specifically targetted at promotion of entrepreneurship in rural areas. Under this scheme, the government has set up a network of incubation centres for agriculture startups. ASPIRE also provides funds to set up Technology and Livelihood Business Incubators in rural areas.
In 2016, the government’s thinktank NITI Aayog launched the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) with the objective of promoting entrepreneurship and innovation across the country at schools, colleges, research institutes, universities, as well as enterprises of various sizes. Under the Atal Innovation Mission, startup incubators called Atal Incubation Centres are set up in higher education centres and industries. To cater to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and other underserved areas including tribal areas, Atal Community Innovation Centres are set up. Besides these, AIM also offers a programme named Atal New India Challenge 2.0 to foster technology driven innovations to solve specific sectoral challenges that are important to the country. The current challenges open to solution prototypes are around millets in agriculture, postal system, drinking water and sanitation, renewable energy and clean-tech, and education.
To promote entrepreneurship among women and members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST), the Stand-Up India scheme was launched in April 2016. Under this scheme, an SC/ST member or a woman entrepreneur can avail of a composite loan from a scheduled commercial bank for their first business venture. As of March 2023, loans worth 407 billion Rupees have been disbursed to over 180,000 SC/ST entrepreneurs, and loans of 331 billion Rupees have been given to over 144,000 women entrepreneurs.
In 2018, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) launched the Multiplier Grants Scheme (MGS) to promote collaboration in research and development between industry and academic institutions. This scheme not only sought to encourage academic institutions to undertake research that is industry-oriented, but it also aimed to close the gap between proof-of-concept and final go-to-market and commercialisation.
Prime Minister Modi often uses the term Aatmanirbhar Bharat in the context of the government’s plans to make the new India more self-reliant, competitive, resilient, and one that plays a greater role in the world economy. During the launch of the COVID-19 related economic package in July 2020, the government launched the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge to create “World class made in India apps”. On the professional networking website, Prime Minister Modi gave a call to tech entrepreneurs to join in on the challenge. “Let’s code for an Atmanirbhar Bharat”. The challenge received 6940 entries across the nine categories of apps, and 24 apps were chosen winners. Among the winners were Zoho Workplace, Zoho Invoice, the fake news checker app – Logically, the social network – Koo, navigation app – MapMyIndia Move, and the Indian alternative to TikTok – Chingari.
In 2021, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry launched the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) to provide funds to startups during the early stages of concept testing, prototyping, product trials, and market entry when it is often difficult to seek funding from other sources. The scheme was launched with an initial outlay of 9.45 billion rupees to be spent over four years and would be disbursed to an expected 3600 startups through incubators.
To support startups in emerging areas of technology such as blockchain, AI, IoT, and more, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has the Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) 2.0 that provides funding and technical mentoring to startups with an idea or a concept, and helps them get to a minimum viable product.
Most technology startups fail in the first few years due to paucity of timely funds and networking, even if they get the product and market fit right. To solve this problem at scale, MeitY launched Startup Accelerator of MeitY for Product Innovation, Development and Growth (SAMRIDH) in 2021. SAMRIDH is implemented by MeitY Startup Hub and aims to accelerate 300 deep-tech startups, in cohorts of 8-10 startups, through a 6-month acceleration programme every year during which the startups would be provided with investor connect, market connect, as well as international exposure, besides funding.
When India took over the Presidency of the G20 from Indonesia in 2022, a new official engagement group – Startup20 – was created, reflecting the government’s continued commitment to startups. The Startup20 Engagement Group brought together startups from the G20 countries to deliberate on building enablement capabilities, identify gaps in funding, increase employment opportunities, and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets by leveraging startups.
The Startup20 Summit identified five major areas of action in their policy recommendation – adopting a global startup definition framework; easing access to capital, markets, mentors, and talent; increasing inclusion of under-represented groups in startup ecosystems; building mechanisms to identify and scale startups of global interest; and, establishing a networked institution for startups across G20 nations. The Startup20 engagement group also called upon the G20 heads of state to increase the joint annual investment of G20 nations in the global startup ecosystem to $1 trillion by 2030.
While the government of India has a bouquet of funding schemes, startups in India have relatively easy access to many other funding sources, some quite unconventional and innovative. During the financial year 2021-22, private equity and venture capital fund inflows into India touched a record USD 82 billion. The same period also saw successful exits worth over USD 45 billion.
Most startups take life with the entrepreneur committing their own money into it, which is called bootstrapping. As the entrepreneur seeks to achieve the next level of growth for the startup, there are a variety of options available depending on the stage of the startup and the potential returns that the business can achieve. Some years ago, if an entrepreneur wanted to seek funding, the options were largely to approach an angel investor, or a venture capitalist. Today, there are many more choices to choose from.
Conventionally, angel investors were individual investors who were willing to invest in early-stage startups. The term ‘angel’ has its roots in Broadway musicals where wealthy investors were willing to fund theatrical productions, and the repayments were due only after revenues were generated.
Angel investors in the startup world take on similar risks, betting on startups in their very early stages. However, perhaps what is of greater value to the entrepreneurs is that these angel investors, who are themselves successful entrepreneurs, offer mentorship and networking opportunities to the startup entrepreneurs that they fund.
With the emergence of angel investor networks and platforms, individual investors can pool in their money and invest in startups as a group, lowering the risks for the investors. Think of it as some kind of mutual fund. LetsVenture, India Angel Network, Mumbai Angels Network, The Chennai Angels, AngelList are some prominent angel networks and platforms.
While angel investors provide the initial funding to get a startup past the early stages, big money comes in when venture capital funds get involved. Popularly called VCs, venture capital funds are businesses that provide large amounts of capital to startups in return for an equity stake. Besides providing capital, the VCs also monitor the startups closely through the investment period to ensure that they generate the desired returns. Some active VC funds in India are Sequoia Capital, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, Accel Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Warburg Pincus, Tiger Global, besides many others.
However, not all venture capital funds look to pump big money. There are some called micro VC funds that fund startups in the idea stages, with smaller investment sizes. Fluid Ventures, iSEED Ventures, Artha Venture Fund are some active micro VC funds in India.
A new kind of venture capital fund have risen in popularity and prominence in India over the last few years – Corporate Venture Capital (CVC). Put simply, these are venture capital arms of established corporates, and they operate like any other VC fund, investing directly into private startups. orporates provide the startups with strategic expertise and also contribute immensely to marketing through the value of the corporate brand. Frequently, the CVCs choose the startups with a strategic intent in mind – whether to develop an innovative new technology, or to acquire a new target market, or even to acquire a talent pool. Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Mahindra Partners, TVS Capital Funds, and Samsung Venture Investment are some active CVCs in India.
Both angel investors and venture capital funds acquire an ownership stake or equity in the startups that they fund. For most startups in the early and growth stages, traditional debt in the form of bank loans is simply not an available option due to the lack of collateral to back the loan as well as the uncertain nature of the startups. For startups that have already raised capital from venture capital funds and are unwilling to raise more funds from a VC to avoid further dilution of ownership, venture debt funds provide an ideal alternative. These are specialised funds that provide debt financing to VC-backed startups. Besides being able to retain ownership while still accessing capital, entrepreneurs also benefit from flexible loan terms and repayment schedules when compared with traditional debts from banks. The ability to retain ownership is a big plus, especially under a challenging economic macro environment. During the third quarter of 2023, with VC fund flows drying up, debt financing outstripped equity in India. Alteria Capital, Trifecta Capital, InnoVen Capital, Stride Ventures, Blacksoil, and Northern Arc are some active venture debt funds.
Traditionally, big business houses in India have sought to pass on their wealth within the family to the next generation. However, that attitude is changing with the new generation of business leaders at these houses. They are setting up family offices – private wealth management firms – that cater to the investment decisions of a particular high-net worth family. These family offices are increasingly active in channelling their wealth into startups. PremjiInvest (Wipro), SharrpInvest (Marico), Innovations Family Office (S.D. Shibulal), Bryanston (Pidilite Group), Adani, Bajaj, Godrej, Hero, and Infina (Uday Kotak) are some active family offices.
Sometimes, the families of more than one business leader combine their wealth into a multi-family office. Acquitas Capital, Julius Baer, Entrust Family Office, and Credence are some of the multi-family offices in India.
Over the last few years, funding by celebrities has boomed in the country. Some of them invest as individual investors while others have dedicated investment firms to manage their investments. Celebrities have traditionally entered into brand endorsement deals to leverage their tremendous star power. However, for a startup, they can bring in more value by being involved more closely, giving the startup the much-needed eyeballs and credibility.
Often, celebrities invest in companies that align with their own personal values, for instance, cricketer Virat Kohli and his actor wife Anushka Sharma – both advocates of healthy and plant-based eating – have invested in plant-based meat alternative startup called Blue Tribe, and a healthy snack startup, Slurrp Farms. Virat’s former captain, M. S. Dhoni has invested in another plant protein startup, Shaka Harry. Alia Bhatt has invested in the IIT-Kanpur incubated flower recycling startup, Phool, in the ecommerce startup Nykaa, and more recently, after the birth of her child, in the reusable cloth diaper brand, Superbottoms.
Deepika Padukone’s family office, Ka Enterprises, seeks to invest in consumer and consumer-tech firms and has invested in the plant-based yogurt brand Epigamia, furniture rental and retail startup, Furlenco, energy-efficient fan company, Atomberg, and also in India’s largest speciality coffee chain, Blue Tokai.
The drone startup founded by a former trainee at ISRO, DroneAcharya, was funded by actors Ranbir Kapoor and Aamir Khan, before going on to make a stellar IPO debut on the BSE SME platform in December 2022.
Marquee cricketer Sachin Tendulkar may have retired a decade ago, but he continues to leverage his star power and his personal wealth through investments in startups such as the used car selling platform, Spinny, IoT and smart devices startup, Smartron, and digital entertainment and gaming company, JetSyntheses, among others.
Crowdfunding is another potential funding source, though not very popular. Individual retail investors looking to invest small amounts can come together on platforms such as Patreon, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundMe, to invest in startups. Crowdfunding platforms that raise equity for startups also exist, but the legality of such platforms in India has come into question through certain recent actions of the Registrar of Companies against a crowdfunding entity named Tyke.
Finally, another important contributor to the startup ecosystem in India has been the proliferation of incubators and accelerators. Like the SAMRIDH scheme, many of the other government schemes are run via startup incubators and accelerators. And not just the government, there are many privately run startup incubators across the country. These incubators do exactly what the name suggests – provide a cosy, protected microcosm to nurture a startup in the early days and protect it from the harsh market realities outside, while still preparing it to grow and take on the world. And when the startup is ready to take its first steps, accelerators come in and help it take wings and fly.
All major startup hubs in India have incubators and accelerators, some of them are attached to educational institutions, while others are run by corporates or are even run independently. Venture Catalysts, CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad, 10000 Startups, and AdvantEdge Founders are some popular startup incubators. Y Combinator, GSF Accelerator, Microsoft Accelerator, and T-Hub are some prominent accelerators.
For startups, collaboration and networking are critical. Startup events, conferences, co-working spaces, and even coffee shops are instrumental in such networking. The outlet of Costa Coffee in Koramangala 4th Block, Bengaluru, is a favourite haunt for entrepreneurs and investors alike. In fact, it is where venture capitalists go to look for and meet promising startups that they can potentially invest in.
Startup India’s Innovation Summit, India Startup Festival, and YourStory’s TechSparks Conference are just a few of the biggest startup conferences in India.
India’s humongous population is a double-edged sword. While the population gives us the appealing tag of a massive domestic market, for the government, providing gainful employment opportunities to as many job seekers as possible is a tremendous challenge. This is another area where startups can contribute. According to the Economic Survey 2022-23, startups registered with the DPIIT have created close to a million direct job opportunities since 2017. In 2022 alone, startups created 269,000 direct jobs, a number that is a stunning 64% higher than the average of the previous three years.
India is a diverse country – in terms of geographic spread, language, culture, and ethnic diversity, as well as consumer behaviour, awareness, and attitudes. While this diversity poses tremendous challenges for businesses, it also presents a huge opportunity for startups. After all, startup founders love solving problems. If a startup manages to succeed across India, it can often replicate the success in other geographies because many emerging countries tend to have similar challenges. And not only in emerging geographies, solutions tested and scaled in India can also be successful in developed markets.
When talking about India, phrases such as vast potential and dynamic spirit are invoked frequently. These are the characteristics of the people of this country that make it so entrepreneurial. As we become more accustomed to a culture of risk-taking, we will only see more and more startups and entrepreneurs prosper. These startups will continue to inspire the next generation of youth in India and also the world, by disrupting traditional ways of doing business, by creating jobs, and by creating economic prosperity for themselves, for the society, and for India.