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Witnessing the Development in Early Stage Ecosystem

Anil Joshi
President-Mumbai Angels
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Anil Joshi
A couple of years back there were very few angel groups, but the scenario has changed now as there are over a dozen angel groups spread across major cities. India has the potential to have several angels group within each state and the future will see a significant growth in their numbers. The industry is also witnessing a rise in the accelerators; hence the early stage ecosystem would observe several startups seeing the light of the day. The early stage ecosystem is observing tremendous developments across the value chain and the focus is on early stage investment.

Earlier the focus for investors was on services, however, high quality product companies are also getting initiated in India. IT, Telecom, Healthcare and Education are the current favorite sectors that are witnessing growth. Within IT, big data and cloud computing are growing as businesses look for more intelligence tools. Mobility is another sector to see a surge in investment activity.

Covert Great Idea into Great Business India is a country of over 1.3 billion population and offers a big market for any product and services company. Being a developing nation, we are seeing development in every space as there is immense scope for innovation. For an instance, Meru Cabs, which was a very basic cab service, became a staggering success by offering better services by being innovative.

Another great example for being innovative is RedBus where technology was used to offer great ticketing and booking services for bus travelers. RedBus not only used technology to their advantage in delighting consumers but also opened up market for bus operators. InMobi, which is one of our portfolio companies, has built technology which competes with likes of Google and is considered to be one of the most successful startups.

Today, there are opportunities ripe for entrepreneurs who are springing up left right and center. But great ideas do not automatically translate into great businesses. They always need to work on disruptive ideas and keep innovating so that they can be ahead of the curve. Apart from this, an entrepreneur must be focused on big markets; build good teams, preferably people who are smarter than you; learn to delegate work and have a good advisor on board to find success. A true entrepreneur is someone who can convert a great idea into a great business.

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