Enterprising India Inc.

What exactly is a “Made in India” entrepreneur? I travelled the length and breadth of India meeting leading entrepreneurs from sectors such as IT and Finance to Renewable Energy and Bollywood to see if I could find out if there is a common Indian thread.
 
The first thing to note is that the DNA of the Indian entrepreneur is very different to their peers in the West. What comes out through my interviews is how each one of them takes their Indian experience and uses it to their advantage. In several cases, we are not referring to professional entrepreneurs who are constantly looking for a gap in the market, but in the Indian case are typically looking at improving the situation for them and their fellow citizens. This necessity may explain why starting a business in India amounts to a whopping 70 per cent of per capita gross national income compared to 8 per cent in China.
 
Entrepreneurship is actually the backbone of the country – from the back-streets of Mumbai to the coffee shops of Kolkata. It was inspiring to meet legends like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who set-up Asia’s largest biotech firm all the way through to Subhash Chandra, who besides beating Rupert Murdoch in this early days at Zee, actually has a 30% global market share for toothpaste tubes through Essel.
 
There’s no doubt that entrepreneurs all over the world work hard, but what I learnt was how each of those titans I interviewed was motivated not only by the bottom line, but also by their desire to do good for their country knowing full well the challenges of operating in a world changed by the economic downturn.
 
Coming back to my earlier point about taking their Indian experience to challenge their Western counterparts, we see some stunning results from the likes of K.V. Kamath, who turned ICICI from a development finance institution to a global retail bank by understanding how to minimize transaction costs – at first for the Indian rural customer – and then applying that learning to delivering a no-frills internet savings product in the UK that only works because of their lower transaction costs.
 
It is clear to me that by pushing the envelope by leveraging their Indian experiences, these entrepreneurs are creating new markets by providing innovative products and services that the Western economies are keen to embrace.
 
It seems what they’ve decided is to lead by the power of example. So, Malvinder Singh’s commitment to halve the cost of HIV drugs in India, or Tulsi Tanti’s realisation that wind energy can offer India the much required electricity it craves to compete with the world, it is their examples that are today are being discussed at global platforms like the WEF during Davos week. Finally, we see them providing solutions to global problems by the power of their example.
 
However, their paths to success haven’t been as straightforward as they may have wished, issues concerning stifling government bureaucracy, lack of venture capital support, and more importantly a mindset that fails to comprehend a bigger, inter-connected world from their support structures, are issues that they’ve had to fight against.
 
Take for example, Biocon’s genesis as a garage start-up where Kiran Mazumdar Shaw found it almost impossible to find an angel investor to finance her dream; lucky for her that her persistence paid off and the then CEO of ICICI – N. Vaghul bought into her vision and therefore laid the foundations for the birth of an entire new industry in India.
 
Quite amusingly, we also have the example of Shiv Nadar who made the most of the stifling, over-protective government bureaucracy by launching his company at a time when IBM were shown the door and more or less asked to leave India, and thus using this as an opportunity to provide a service much required to India’s business world.
 
That we live in a ‘global village’ is of no doubt, but imagine a time almost twenty years ago when a young Baba Kalyani had to convince his family to invest a princely sum in the up-gradation of their plant in Pune, because one day – he guessed – this investment would propel his firm to supply components to almost every single vehicle manufacturer in the world – making Bharat Forge a jewel for brand India.
 
That they understand that India’s success is theirs and vice versa is a major theme that emerges from all my interaction, whether we talk about their appetite for global acquisitions; hiring talent from the leading business schools of the world, to the way they present their true strengths in the boardrooms of globally respected firms in the far flung corners of this world, for me the biggest learning point is that these trailblazers are showing what India can offer the world by the power of their example.
 
Putting it simply, they’re walking the talk.
 
Vikas Pota is the author of the forthcoming book India Inc: How India’s Top 10 Entrepreneurs Are Winning Globally and managing director at SaffronChase, a government relations and PR consultancy firm.