Entrepreneurship

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 feb 2018

Challenges in healthcare provide opportunities to create new business models. Home healthcare is one such model that is currently getting more organized and seeking success in India's healthcare ecosystem. According to Cyber Media Research (CMR), the market stood at around US$ 3.20 billion in 2016, and is expected to grow to around US$ 4.46 billion by 2018 and US$ 6.21 billion in 2020. Vivek Srivastava, CEO and co-founder of Healthcare atHome, says, 'Home healthcare services are an extension of hospital services into the patient's house and providing personalized care by competent professionals. Home healthcare companies work with hospitals to widen their reach, by freeing the beds for new patients while covering almost 70% of all healthcare requirements of a consumer and extending to management of lifestyle and chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension etc. over a consumer's lifetime. Its advantages include cost effectiveness with excellent clinical outcomes as customers end up saving 20-50% costs as compared to regular hospital treatment depending upon the services taken...it includes customized care plans prescribed by the patient's doctor; quicker patient recovery; and professional protocol-led healthcare.' Rajiv Mathur, Founder CCU (Critical Care Unified) Health Care, says, 'Interconnectivity through devices and portability of treatments and equipments makes it feasible to provide critical care at the comfortable environs of home. Patients receive individualized care designed to meet their specific needs. Home health care enables people to recuperate in the comfort and privacy of their own home, at a cost savings of 36-50% over hospitalization or nursing home confinement.' Rajit Mehta, CEO and MD of Max Healthcare, says, 'The demand for at-home healthcare delivery is growing. At the same time, quality post-operative care in familiar surroundings has been observed to enable faster patient recovery.' Prof. Arup Mitra of Health Policy Research Unit (HPRU) at Institute of Economic Growth, says, 'Home healthcare is becoming a brisk business nowadays. As elderly population in the country is increasing very fast and more and more people want to have better social positioning, facilities such as home healthcare seem very flashy at face value and is manifestation of people's social status. It is in a preliminary stage and may prove to be an illusion in future as there is no guarantee of risks and insurance involved.' Read on...

Livemint: Market for home healthcare services in India to double in a year - Report
Author: Neetu Chandra Sharma

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 jan 2018

Social entrepreneurship ecosystem conference, 'Development Dialogue', organized by Kakatiya Sandbox, was recently held in Nizamabad (Telengana, India). Experts emphasized the need for greater collaboration between government and innovators to build the ecosystem. This year's theme was 'Collaborating for Big Bets'. Gururak Deshpande, venture capitalist, philanthropist and founder of Deshpande Foundation, says, 'We should not expect governments to innovate. Instead, we need to develop a system via philanthropic money to experiment, and if something works, the government needs to acquire it. That way we will be able to bring about transformations that are systemic and large.' NVS Reddy, Managing Director of Hyderbad Metro Rail (HMR), says, 'Out of more than 200 mass transportation projects in the world, only four metro projects are making profits. When we took up the Hyderabad Metro Project under the public-private partnership (PPP) model...world's biggest metro project...many were sceptical about its success. We were able to tackle all the challenges with a collaborative approach.' Phanindra Sama, Chief Innovation Officer of Telangana and co-founder of Kakatiya Sandbox, says, 'Governments are now open to innovative ideas. The onus is on the individuals to seize this opportunity and make an impact from within...' Read on...

The Times of India: 'Must build ecosystem for social entrepreneurship'
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 11 jan 2018

India's growth trajectory can slow down if firms are not able to grow and banks are not able to lend. Restructuring can be an immediate policy solution for the twin balance-sheet problem. But, for the long-term growth and job creation, the causes of financial misallocation have to be deeply considered and mitigated. Growth needs more efficient firms to produce more output and use more factors of production, which includes ease of access to bank loans. Contrary to this in India, a case of financial misallocation is a common phenonmenon, where less efficient firms get more bank loans reducing the ability of more efficient firms to grow and scale up. The cause for India's financial misallocation is distortion in the land market, as less efficient firms can access more land consequently enhancing their ability to get loans. Land provides strong collateral to access bank loans. Financial misallocation is a bigger problem in the manufacturing sector, that is more land intensive, as compared to services industry. World Bank lead economist, Ejaz Ghani, alongwith Gilles Duranton, Arti Goswami Grover and William Robert Kerr, examined plant-level data on millions of formal and informal enterprises, in both the manufacturing and services sectors, in more than 600 districts in India and provided important insights into the geographic and industry distributions of financial and land misallocation in their World Bank research report, 'Effects Of Land Misallocation On Capital Allocations In India'. According to Mr. Ghani, 'Most bank loans in the manufacturing sector are taken up by large firms in the organized sector. The small firms in the unorganized sector, which account for nearly 80% of jobs, and about half of the value of land and buildings held in the manufacturing sector, pull in a very small share of bank loans. The value of financial loans reported in the informal sector is barely 2-6% of the value of total bank loans reported in the manufacturing sector.' Mr. Ghani explains, 'We computed an index of misallocation in manufacturing and services, and the organized and unorganized sectors, in the districts. The indices of misallocation for output, value added, and factors of production were computed individually for financial loans, land and labour. India is one of the most land-scarce countries in the world. Land and financial misallocation trumps labour misallocation. The former appears to be at the root of much of the misallocation of output in the manufacturing sector...poorly functioning land and financial markets explain why India has so few start-ups; entrants are constrained by financial misallocation, and incumbents don't grow in the manufacturing sector.' Mr. Ghani recommends, 'Policy makers need to pay more attention to addressing the underlying causes of financial misallocation. This would involve removing land market distortions, better land-use regulations, and more efficient taxation of properties. Faster growth requires marching ahead with even stronger policy reforms to promote competition and innovation, and enabling more efficient firms to grow faster.' Read on...

Livemint: Reducing financial misallocation in India
Author: Ejaz Ghani

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 dec 2017

Family businesses are a substantial part of India's economic landscape with two-thirds of the listed corporates (with market cap above US$ 50 million) and contributing 79% to GDP. Presently, survival rate of family businesses from first to second generation is 30%, falling sharply to 12% and then just 3% after that. Family businesses have their own set of challenges and have to continuously evolve and stay competitive. According to Vishesh C. Chandiok of Grant Thornton India, 'Typically, family businesses go through three stages over the first three generations - entrepreneurship, sibling partnership and cousins confederation. Complexity of issues at each stage changes exponentially...Technology is disrupting old family business as also giving an opportunity to the family to rapidly build or own new-age business. It's more of an opportunity than a threat for Indian family business, if they can have a well organised family office that is separate from the main business.' Pranav Sayta of Ernst & Young says, 'Often, emotional ties come in the way of mature decision-making when handing over reins, and that impacts transition after the first generation is no more.' But it is not always the case as many owners have successfully diversified their businesses and others have brought in professional management to take them to further growth and progress. Nitin Atroley of KPMG says, 'A big challenge is maintaining the same momentum and scale.' Nikhil Prasad Ojha of Bain & Company says, 'It's important to imbibe the learnings of the founders' mentality to thrive.' While the nature of businesses is changing with more technology use, it's important for GeNext to know their 'roles and goals', says Mr. Chandiok. Mr. Atroley points out, 'This era calls for a higher risk-taking ability to deal with continuous disruption that industries are going through.' Mr. Ojha comments, 'The central challenge for the next generation is to become 'scale insurgent' in their industry. They must simultaneously capture the benefits of size and retain a strong sense of founders' mentality (that is, insurgency, frontline obsession and owner mindset).' Mr. Sayta believes family businesses have a much longer term vision compared to professionally-run businesses, which are under tremendous pressure to perform and deliver in the short term. He adds, 'There will definitely be room for family businesses, provided they adapt to changing times.' Read on...

The Economic Times: How family-run businesses are evolving amid innovation and the startup invasion
Author: Shelley Singh

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 dec 2017

Entrepreneurship as a thought process is to be inculcated at the very early stage among children. It is also essential to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem in India that brings all the elements together for entrepreneurship to thrive. In a recently held panel discussion in Hyderabad (India) on developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem, moderated by Ramesh Abhishek (Secretary at the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion), Patricia G. Greene (Director of Women's Bureau, US Department of Labour) said, 'This effort should begin right from the pre-school days in children where teachers can drive kids to become future entrepreneurs.' Another panelist, Ravi Kailas (Chairman at Mytrah Energy) said, 'The ecosystem has a huge impact on creating different types of entrepreneurs...Innovative ideas and ventures will always bring in funds.' While Amit Ranbir Chandra (MD and India Head at Bain Capital) emphasised the need for domestic capital to address the requirements of entrepreneurs and less dependency on government funding. Read on...

The Hindu: Inculcate entrepreneurship spirit from 'pre-school days'
Author: G. Naga Sridhar

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 12 nov 2017

Thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem drives business growth and economic development. India is steadily transforming itself into a major hub of tech entrepreneurship. According to Raman Roy, Chairman of NASSCOM and CEO of Quatro, 'About 1000 tech start-ups were registered this year (2017), taking their total to 5200 and making India the world's third largest start-up ecosystem.' The report 'Indian Start-up Ecosystem - Traversing the maturity cycle', compiled jointly by NASSCOM and Zinnov, was recently released. Major trends include - India is witnessing a rapid rise in the B2B tech start-up landscape, focused on verticals like healthtech, fintech, and ecommerce/aggregators; Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR and Mumbai retained their position as the key start-up hubs, with 20% of the start-ups emerging from tier-2 and tier-3 cities across the country. Some highlights of the report - 40% of the start-ups are in the B2B segment. Its share in tech start-up funding is 30%; Fin-tech start-up base is about 360, indicating 31% annual growth, with US$ 200 million funding in the first half of this year, recording a 135% annual growth; Health-based technology start-ups are 320, with 28% annual growth and attracted US$ 160 million funding in the April-September period, which is an increase of 129% in the same period of 2016. Mr. Roy says, 'With 60% start-ups, the B2C segment is focused on creating innovative business models and taking the vertical approach, securing about 70% funding in the year's first half.' R. Chandrashekhar, NASSCOM president and former Telecom Secretary, observing that the ecosystem is driven by young, diverse and inclusive entrepreneurs, says that the landscape is leading to focused domain solutions in verticals like healthcare, agriculture and education. He comments, 'We will continue its drive towards catalysing tech start-ups, build category leaders and support start-ups to create for India.' Read on...

FirstPost: India added 1,000 technology start-ups in 2017; maintains the third spot as the largest hub for entrepreneurship
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 oct 2017

India's future success will be defined on the basis of how its positive elements like demographic dividend, IT and software, manufacturing, agriculture, government initiatives (Make in India, Digital India, Skill India, Startup India) etc, gel together effectively and grow. Adding to all these, focus on research, design and innovation, will further propel creation and development of new and emerging technologies and concepts. Specifically, Indian auto industry does have R&D capabilities, but it is mostly driven by foreign collaborations and partnerships. Moreover, Indian operations of most foreign auto makers rely on their global development centers when it comes to technological innovations. But the dynamics of the industry are shifting, and companies are mobilizing resources and assets towards design and development also, in addition to manufacturing. The change is also visible in the electric vehicle segment with a strong policy focus. Recent conference organized by NASSCOM and Autocar Professional was directed towards discussing the design, R&D and technology based future of the industry. Sameer Yajnik, COO-APAC of Tata Technologies, says, 'Indian engineers, thus far, have brought together just a few parts of the jigsaw puzzle in terms of vehicle development, but this is set to be transformed. With EVs, ADAS, autonomous, connected cars, et al, there are a slew of technology-driven changes that need to be responded to and India is an excellent place.' Patrick Newbery, Chief Digital Officer of Global Logic, says, 'Design and engineering work best when coupled together, and the Indian start-up ecosystem has displayed a good show of that already...Amalgamating design and engineering, as well as with its ability to innovate and create as a response-stimulus to change, India holds a strong place in developing new future technologies, where even the US would be looking outside to outsource these innovative solutions. There is more likelihood of innovation coming out of such environment.' Current spend in automotive engineering and R&D of Europe is 35%, that of US is 25% and, India's is at 10%. This is expected to triple in next 3 years. Sanjeev Verma, CEO of Altran India, says, 'India holds a very important place in the whole jigsaw and especially can play a great role in designing passive safety and IoT systems...With the whole ecosystem springing up now, the next three to four years are going to be extremely transformational for the development vertical in the Indian automotive sector.' Commenting on design in India, Raman Vaidyanathan of Tech Mahindra says, 'Indian engineering is bound to be more frugal, compared to the rest of the world because of the country’s legacy in being cost conscious. This is very positive as it implies that a good quality product, designed and developed to a cost in India could be produced in the emerged markets, while the reverse is going to prove rather expensive.' The challenge of skilled human resources in design and engineering in India remains. NASSCOM has started a foundation course in integrated product development that has reached 1000 colleges since CY2015. Government, academica and industry has to come up with integrated strategies that need to be applied to upgrade the knowledge and skills of graduates coming out of technology institutes and ensure success of design, research and development in India. Read on...

Autocar Professional: Beyond Make in India - Design and develop in India now imperative
Authors: Sumantra B. Barooah, Mayank Dhingra

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 apr 2017

According to the findings of KPMG 2017 Global Technology Innovation report, US and China continue to be the most promising markets for technology breakthroughs that have global impact, with India and the UK progressing in third and fourth place with innovative tech hubs of their own. The report is based on survey of 841 business executives globally that focus on technology, and highlights the changing landscape of disruptive technologies, with perspectives on technology innovation trends, barriers to commercialize innovation, and insights into technology innovation leading practices. Although various countries are trying to emulate Silicon Valley to develop their own technology hubs, some are finding success in their efforts while others are facing macroeconomic and infrastructure challenges. Tim Zanni, Global and US chair of KPMG Technology, Media and Technology practice, says, 'What we have seen emerge over time is the result of countries and cities striving to replicate and build on the Silicon Valley tech innovation blueprint, and their increasing degree of success. One can debate whether or not replicating Silicon Valley is possible, but the benefits of the effort are undeniable.' Mr. Zanni states in the report that growing ecosystems as tech innovation has spread across all industries, is fueling the expansion of technology innovation development. Respondents of the survey consider the following as the top global technology innovation visionaries - Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Tim Cook, CEO of Apple; Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba; Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet; Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google; Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft; Bill Gates of Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook; Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Read on...

The Next Silicon Valley: US and China are top innovation hubs, followed by India and UK
Author: Nitin Dahad

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 dec 2016

According to the recent Capgemini and Altimeter study, India is the top innovation destination in Asia and second in the world for new innovation centers. 27% of Asia's new innovation centers are now in India and globally it has 1 in every ten new innovation centers. Cumulatively, India is ranked third with 25, while top two ranked are US (146) and UK (29). Within India, Bengaluru was the favorite destination with 3 out of 11 total that opened between Mar-Oct'16. The study defines 'Innovation Centers' as non-traditional in-house hubs built by enterprises to find new trends happening across the technology ecosystem through interactions with startups, entrepreneurs and others. Their main objectives are to accelerate digital innovation, rethink customer experience, improve operational efficiency and test new business models. Current priorities shared among innovation centers focus on digital technologies such as big data, internet-of-things (IoT), social media, mobile, robotics, augmented reality and 3D printing. Read on...

The Times of India: India ranked No. 2 innovation destination in the world
Author: Shalina Pillai

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 03 nov 2016

There is always a difference of opinion when it comes to whether entrepreneurship is an inherent trait or it can be taught and learned. Both sides seem to have reasonable examples to justify their perspective. For those who value the concept of entreprenuership in business or are contemplating to tread entrepreneurial path, here are some good reads - (1) 'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish' by Rashmi Bansal (2) 'Creativity Inc.' by Ed Catmull (3) 'Zero to None' by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel (4) 'Business Start Up 101' by Chris Gattis (5) 'The Four Hour Work Week' by Timothy Ferriss (6) 'How To Win Friends And Influence People' by Dale Carnegie (7) 'The Life and Business Lessons of Warren Buffett' by George Ilian (8) 'The Fountain Head' by Ayn Rand (9) 'Think and Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill. Read on...

Entrepreneur: 9 Must Read Books on Entrepreneurship
Author: Saumya Kaushik

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