Indian Entrepreneurs, booming startup ecosystem and the vision of Ramaiah Evolute

Gone are days where cream Indian talent used to migrate to the United States to find a high paying job and settle down for a comfortable life. As we speak, the young India wants to hustle and they want to start their journey from their own home turf.  India in the past 5 years has transformed into a hub for start-ups due to access to funds and Internet adoption. According to a report posted by TRAI, cheaper internet cost ( $.68 / GB)  has catalysed the Internet adoption in India. it is estimated that by 2030 India will alone have 1.3Bn+ internet users. India will witness a internet penetration close to 61%, that will be a  44% increase in Internet users from 2022 to 2030. Today there are about 305 Mn+ users doing online transactions in India. There were about 104Bn+ UPI transactions, total value of these UPI transactions hit a mind boggling $2.2Tn+ as reported on June 2022. India today is ranked as the 3^rd largest startup ecosystem in the world, with 57,000 startups launched till date. A combined valuation of Indian startups today is estimated to be $450Bn+.

Booming Indian Start-up Ecosystem
Due to the boom in the startup ecosystem, India is witnessing the birth of more and more entrepreneurs as the days pass by. In 2005 India had only 3500 registered startups, by the end of 2022 that number has increased to about 57000+. This surge in startups has created close to about 5mn jobs. Enterprise tech, E-commerce, Fintech, consumer services, Health tech, Ed-tech, Media & Entertainment, Deep-tech, Transport Tech, Logistics are one of the leading segments which have attracted the interests of the investors. With all the factors favouring India trillion $ growth story, Indian startup ecosystem seems to be  well-positioned to provide ample opportunities for budding entrepreneurs. It is already one of the world fastest-growing economies, and research institutions like the Centre for International Development at Harvard University expect this to continue. As a point of reference, India’s economy is projected to continue to grow at around 7% a year, with China at a little over 4%, the US at 2.5% and Australia a little over 1%. A lot of that growth will be driven by the massive change in the number of people who are classified as middle-class, with the OECD anticipating that within 10 years, about 25% of all middle-class citizens globally will be Indian.

What are the Current  Barriers ?
One of the major challenges what Indian entrepreneurship is facing at a global lever is that the notion of  Indian start-ups simply lack innovation. This is a popular belief that is held by venture capitalists who find most start-ups in India tended to be “Me-too”, either copying existing local businesses or well-known companies from overseas. The argument for a lack of innovation is also supported by India’s low level of patenting activity, with 1423 international patents lodged in 2015/16 compared to 14,626 for South Korea, 29,846 for China and 44,235 for Japan.

Making in-roads
Despite of the challenges, the Indian start-ups in India are starting to make in-roads into the global markets. Some of these improvements have come from the entrepreneurs themselves, boost from government and others have come from the transformation in the way global community is looking at the Indian ecosystem.

How Ramaiah Evolution is fitting in ?
RE’s core vision is to back Indian entrepreneurs who are building solutions/products which are highly innovative and have the potential to create a global impact. With tailor-made hyper scale acceleration program, RE is one of its kind unique cross-disciplinary start-up ecosystems focussed on Innovation promotion and open Innovation developments. We believe start-ups are the nuclei of innovation, disruption and progress. Our objective is to select and nurture the best and the brightest business mind entrepreneurs and start-ups across the globe in their pursuit to become scalable, sustainable and profitable enterprises by providing leading edge infrastructure, mentorship, guidance, training, strategy, partnerships, R&D and funding.