With more than 3,000 tech start-ups, India is the fourth largest base for young businesses in the world and it is expected that by 2020 the base will increase to 11,500 tech start-ups, Nasscom said in its “Tech Start-up in India: A Bright Future” study today.
The report, created in association with research firm Zinnov, suggests that the Indian start-ups are witnessing increased traction in global whitespace opportunities such as Internet of Things, augmented realty, smart hardware, BI and many more. Whitespace opportunities refer to those that spring up in the junction between existing businesses and technologies.
“With technology spreading its wings into different domains, ‘Domain+Tech’ solutions are taking over other trends. The emerging niche technology solutions are primarily focused on Ad-tech, Edu-tech, Health-tech, Agri-tech and many more. Geographically, Bangalore and National Capital Region (NCR) tops the chart for being home to maximum number of young businesses,” Nasscom said.
Nasscom, which started out as the voice of the outsourcing industry in India, has been engaged in trying to handhold the country into making the jump from carrying out work on behalf of foreign companies to actually driving innovation and growth through branded products and services.
The findings of the report also highlight that many trends are maturing in the ecosystem, especially funding aspect.
“Multiple and easily accessible platform like VC/PE, angel investors, incubators, financial institutes and even banks, are the driving force for the same. In fact, during 2010-2014 timeframe close to USD 3 billion is expected to be invested in Indian start-ups.”
“These latest findings clearly indicate the beginning of the golden era for young tech-based businesses, where opportunities for growth are much larger than the challenges in the ecosystem. We are proud to be once again at the cutting edge in helping to support a growing niche within this field, and we are excited to ink new partnerships as we close the year to accelerate our efforts in that direction,” said Rajat Tandon, Senior Director, NASSCOM, who is also in charge of the association’s ‘10,000 Startups’ program.
NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-ups program has successfully paved way for three trends that are shaping the Indian economy with the potential to shake things up: Digitalization, faster innovation cycles, and the rise of young, ambitious talent.
“Start-ups are both a consequence and an accelerating catalyst of these trends. It’s exciting to be here, but we have much to do. This ecosystem is growing in scale and strength and as we move forward, we are focused towards domain specific strategic partnerships to drive it to the next level of maturity in FY 2015,” Nasscom said.
Indians, while intelligent, are seen to lack risk-taking abilities, and have a reputation for playing it safe and sticking to the tried and the tested. As a result, India’s tech landscape is full of companies that provide manpower and facilities, but choose to bill on a ‘fixed rate’ depending on the number of people employed.
Increasingly, companies like Infosys Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd are moving away from the ‘time and material’ model to a riskier, but ultimately more promising model involving taking on more responsibility for how services are rendered, in exchange for getting a higher share of the benefits created by technology for their clients.
The 10,000 Startups program is partnering with AstroLabs Dubai, to navigate Indian Tech Startups to the MENA region. This association will give a tangible edge to support tech entrepreneurs emerging from the 10,000 Start-ups program, both with the physical space and with formal training programs.
Its partnership with ValPro, an investment banking and financial advisory services to leverage a web based platform “Enablers” which facilitates start-ups and SME’s to connect with HNI’s, Angels, and VC’s for fund raising. It is a tool that makes entrepreneurs investor-ready and handhold them through various stages of fund raising.
The Program has also inked another association with CampusEAI Consortium, a leader in the world of higher education information technology services. CampusEAI EduTech Venture Fund invests in early stage enterprise software, Internet and mobile companies that target the education market or companies created from intellectual property technology transfer from colleges and universities.
In addition, to support early-stage companies in Healthcare and Life-sciences domain, we partnered with Escape Velocity Accelerator to review applications for selecting entrepreneurs into its incubation program.
“The EduTech Venture Fund has successfully funded eight early stage start-ups in the education industry and we are in search of our next round of investments,” states Anjli Jain, CEO of CampusEAI and Managing Director of CampusEAI’s EduTech Venture Fund.
“Our partnership with NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-ups program gives us an opportunity to expand our portfolio and existing investments in India-based start-ups and provide early-stage entrepreneurs with the mentorship, guidance and funds they require to be successful. We look forward to working with NASSCOM and accelerating the mission of the 10,000 Start-ups initiative.”
“We look forward to welcoming members of 10,000 Startups at AstroLabs Dubai, enabling their expansion into the growing Middle Eastern market and providing direct access to a region that has the highest smartphone penetration in the world.” said, Mr. Muhammed Mekki, Founding Partner, AstroLabs.
10,000 Start-ups is a NASSCOM initiative supported by Google for Entrepreneurs, Microsoft Ventures, Verisign, Kotak and Intel.