I realize that the last post here was a year and a half ago. However, the good news is that this year and a half has given me plenty of wonderful and challenging life experiences to write about!
The biggest accomplishment in the past year has been starting a company which uses Android based applications to education children in not only urban but also rural and tribal India. I hope to talk more about commercialization in interdisciplinary segments over the next few months, but in the meantime, here’s a list of things that you should keep in mind if you are thinking of starting or have recently started a start-up in India:
1. If this is your first entrepreneurial experience, find a partner who can be trusted and who complements your skills!
2. Create a minimum viable product and test, test, test away! It’s important to take ideas that see their viability because what sounds good may not always work in the market. Here’s a good read from Harvard Business Review on MVP.
3. Learn to be flexible because customers may not always react like you want them to. Just because your product isn’t showing the kind of response it should, doesn’t mean it can’t be sold in another way. Indian markets are not easy to sell to, so don’t be disappointed if you fail at first.
4. Target your audience! It may not always be easy to reach your audience, but sometimes it helps to use ways that don’t seem very scalable. The initial effort will take you a long way. (TIP: Never, ever be afraid of asking for feedback!)
5. Put your lawyer and accountant on speed dial. Seriously. You will need so many documents that you won’t even know you needed that it’s best you keep some experts involved.
6. Don’t rush the call between bootstrapping and investing opportunities. It’s not as simple as it sounds and it’s important that you understand the trade-off involved. While one leaves you with plenty of equity to brag about, the other will speed up the pace of your start-up and increase the value of your company faster (if done right). Also, choose your investor wisely.
7. Leave room for mistakes! The joy of a start-up is the challenges if offers, and these are only augmented further if you are a first time entrepreneur. So, learn not to stress out about every little thing. I realize that India’s corporate scenario seems tedious and that there are lots of hoops to jump through, but remember getting tired on the way won’t get you anywhere. There are bigger challenges awaiting once you get past the smaller ones.
8. Network, network, network! It’s unbelievable how many new insights you will gather and how many new opportunities you will see when you start discussing your idea with the right people.
9. Protect your idea and your project from the big fish, but don’t be paranoid to the point that you lose out on opportunities. Sometimes allying with bigger companies goes a long way.
10. Believe. People will advise you in 10 different ways with 20 different opinions. Take the ones you think resonate with you and put the rest away for storage. Not everyone is right and not everyone is entitled to share your or each others opinions. So be practical, but believe!
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