India v/s the West in entrepreneurial scenario

By Juby Thomas, SiliconIndia   |    3 Comments
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India v/s the West in entrepreneurial scenario
Bangalore: Different countries are in different stages of growth. In India entrepreneurship has got a lot of attention and buzz, especially in the IT and tech sector. "Generally there is a common myth about entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that they are white, male, college dropouts. The studies prove that average age of entrepreneurs in the technological area is 39 and outside technology are 40," said Vivek Wadhwa, Director of Research, Center for Entrepreneurship and Research, Duke University. The number of young entrepreneurs also is growing rapidly in India unlike the West. The average age can be said as between 25 - 30 years. Majority of the experts believe that young entrepreneurs are the driving force of innovation whereas some others believe it as a blunder because as per their view Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are successful due to their rich industry experience. When it comes to women entrepreneurs in India they don't tend to push of the glass seal even though it is more women than men now graduating from college. Whereas reports say that there are 9.1 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., and they employ 27.5 million people. Together, women-owned businesses contribute over $3.6 trillion to the economy each and every year. Recent years, the entrepreneurial activity in the Indian Eco - system grows three times faster than GDP growth. Output by Indian small businesses grew over 100 percent in the last five years thanks to the initiatives of some existing entrepreneurs and some Silicon Valley returned techno-preneurs. West has a good educational system to foster entrepreneurship whereas India needs to change the educational scenario to foster entrepreneurship. So far the country has achieved little in the sphere of product development and that is the need of the hour. Majority of them has an attraction towards the services than product due to fear of risk taking, lack of patience to wait to get the product in the mature market and hesitation of VC's towards funding. If you talk about the growth, it continues to flourish in India despite the persistent problem of corruption. It is true that the Young Indians have taken an optimistic step towards the future. Around 43 percent of the Indian entrepreneurs believe that the country is now much more 'welcoming' than the previous years. Improvements can be seen on the macro developments, especially with an increase in foreign direct investments, higher savings and improvement in infrastructure in the share of India in GDP. The country can also take pride for its contribution to west since one out of every eight startups in Silicon Valley is by an Indian.