The country of contradictions and billion opportunities, India.
Learn about the Indus Valley and the fastest growing major economy today.
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For a while — uncovering India, the opportunity present and how it’s having an outsized impact on the world has filled a large percentage of my curiosity bucket. This past weekend, I decided to bathe myself in an immersion with India, the country of my birth.
In this edition, explore your curiosity about:
The horsepower of the glaring India opportunity
A country of contradictions
The Indus Valley, not Silicon Valley
Unicorn minting
Single chart
Time is not money in India
→ The horsepower of the glaring India opportunity.
Enough said.
→A country of contradictions
It’s not just graphs. It’s visible on the ground.
India’s public transport system: What you might think vs what it’s actually like.
Did you know…..San Francisco wasted $300M+ and decades on a 2-mile bus lane that never finished.
Meanwhile, Kanpur, a tier 2 city in India, built and launched an entire metro rail line in just under 2 years.
India has the highest percentage of female pilots globally
The International Society of Women Airline Pilots estimates, with about 12.4% of all pilots women, compared with 5.5% in the US, the world’s largest aviation market, and 4.7% in the UK.
The statistics raise questions about how a nation — which placed 135th among 146 countries on the World Economic Forum’s ranking of nations based on gender parity — was able to reverse the trend in this particular industry.
Many female pilots in India also have a more prosaic explanation for their successes: Family support. India’s familial structure, where extended families often live together, is particularly helpful in an industry that demands long hours and regular travel away from home, the research shows.
India has the third highest representation on Github, yet only ~55% of engineers are employable.
A few years ago, Narayan Murthy, the father of the Indian IT sector, commented on the flaws of the country’s learning system.
He said, “Engineering colleges in India are churning out only 25 percent quality engineers and nearly 80-85 percent of youngsters are not suitably trained for any job.”
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→ The Indus Valley, not Silicon Valley
The Indus Valley can be referred to as the catch all moniker for the Indian startup ecosystem. “It is a twist on the typical Silicon Wadi naming convention, as well as a reference to the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of the vibrant centres of the ancient world, and the ancestral civilisation of the Indian people.” says Sajith Pai on the ‘Return on India’ Podcast.
Unlike Silicon Valley which has a geographical connotation, the term Indus Valley has no such overtone. It is instead a reference to the entire Indian startup ecosystem, spread throughout the nation. It is also an attitude, a mindset; of invention, and ‘jugaad’ and chutzpah.
Venture Capital has been a key wealth driver in the past few years: 2022 saw liquid wealth of $2B hit employee bank accounts, thanks to ESOPs.
A clear example of the growing power of startups is the increased marketing spend and visibility in sponsorships of the Indian Premier League.
The majority of the unicorns from India (17 out of 23) are currently in 4 sectors:
SaaS, examples include Amagi, LeadSquared, darwinbox
FinTech, examples include Open, Yubi, One Card
Logistics, examples include ElasticRun, XpressBees
E-Commerce, examples include Livspace, Purplle, Tata 1mg
→ Single chart to explain India’s rise
Jio’s entry into telephony through a 4G data first network in 2017 expanded internet access in India dramatically.
→ Time is not money in India
Many people in India work for a monthly wage, so they have no concept of how much they are worth per hour
This creates a culture that does not value the balance of time, energy, and money
Only free products work in India; subscription products fail miserably. They refuse to pay extra for convenience or entertainment.
Anecdote: In the Knowledge Project Podcast, Kunal Shah says that even wealthy people spend hours shifting around their phone storage as opposed to purchasing a couple of dollars worth of cloud storage
Business example: Netflix initially failed in India by attempting a subscription model. Indians are much more willing to give up their time watching ads than paying a subscription. In fact, India had to regulate ad companies because they were taking advantage of this so much.
Western businesses love to come to India to pump their DAU (daily active users), but none will convert to ARPU (average revenue per user)
India may never supersede China economically—here are two reasons why:
Less than 6% of urban Indian women are part of the workforce, even though most of them are well educated (see chart above about the contradiction with Pilots). They never had the one-child policy like China to support such a workforce.
India is in the top three markets of SaaS providers, but none of their customers are local. No Indian business understands the concept of efficiency.
Constant need to make the community successful:
Most people are not occupied in preserving their reputation. But Kunal Shah says — “According to me, you can not develop substance, net worth, wealth, experience unless you’re constantly willing to risk your reputation”
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There’s a LOT more I can unpack on India, maybe I’ll write an extension to this in the future. If you enjoyed reading this, I’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with me here.
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