Tech-Talent: Indians Reshaping the Startup Industry Globally

Maintaining the status of the fastest growing economy, India has emerged as the 5th largest economy in the world and replaced the United Kingdom. This is a commendable achievement, and if the momentum continues, India's economy is expected to reach $5 trillion by 2024-25 and $ 10 trillion by 2030. The nation is growing quickly to become a global economic superpower. India has a sizable consumer market and a rapidly growing working-age population. Due to several push-pull elements, including problem-solving, innovative talents/skills, digital literacy, unwavering hard work, and the capacity to adopt new technologies, the global corporate sector is quickly turning to the talent pool of India.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and a few other premier tech institutions have been instruments in creating a pool of entrepreneurial talent and mindset. They now dominate the global startup ecosystem, and their dominance in India is unmatched.

IITians at the Top

It is proven that IITs lead the pack and the premier institutes are the 4th largest producers of unicorn startup investments globally. The founders and co-founders of widely known Indian unicorns like Flipkart, Bigbasket, Byju's, Paytm, Swiggy, Zerodha, Slice, Grofers, Snapdeal, Ola, Oyo, and MakeMyTrip come from IITs and other premier tech institutions. Among IITs, IIT-Delhi tops the list in providing entrepreneurial talents. Overall, 30 founders come from IIT-Delhi, and IIT-Bombay occupies the second position with 18 India startup founders , according to a Survey. A few are also from IIT Kharagpur and IIT Madras alumni. Prominent founders from IIT-Delhi include Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal (Flipkart), Deepinder Goyal, Gaurav Gupta and Pankaj Chaddah (Zomato), Kapil Bharti ( Delhivery), Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwalm (Meesho). Rajul Garg and Tarun Upadhyay (Pine Labs).

From IIT-Bombay comes the founders of Ola Cabs-Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal, CitiusTech's Jagdish Moorjani and Rizwan Koita, and BillDesk's Karthik Ganapathy. The founder of logistic service startup Rivigo Deepak Garg comes from IIT Kanpur, and co-founder Gazal Kalra graduated from IIT-Delhi. Other prominent IIT-Kanpur alumni include Naveen Tewari (Glance- Software), Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan ( ShareChat), Abhiraj Singh Bhal and Varun Khaitan (Urban Company).

Apart from IITs, a few other premier institutes also contribute to providing entrepreneurial mindsets and talents. From Delhi School of Engineering comes Supam Maheshwari, co-founder of FirstCry and PayTM's founders Akshay Khanna and Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

These entrepreneurs also leveraged the benefits of an emerging startup ecosystem in India and other countries. The Indian government has also made sufficient efforts to advance the nation's entrepreneurial culture. The types of funding for startups India Initiative (or Startup India Programme) was introduced by the government in 2016 to foster entrepreneurship by establishing a strong startup companies ecosystem , offering financial assistance, fostering incubation, and fostering collaborations between business and academia.

Presence in the global market

Borders and time zones have become important thanks to technology. Teams composed of talent from around a nation or the world, including remote and hybrid teams, are becoming common. Going international used to be a road taken by established firms. There has been a noticeable pattern of globally dispersed innovation over fifteen years. Hubilo to Darwinbox, Zetwerk to Zolve, Innovaccer to Byju's, and others have all discovered global expansion.

About 30% of India's 80 unicorns have gone or are going global, betting that the global market will be their primary chance for influence. Unsurprisingly, a surprising number of ed-tech and B2B commerce enterprises have also made the switch. As expected, many of these are in the Software as a Service (SaaS) sector. 20% more businesses, mostly in the consumer services sector, have expanded their operations internationally on a more modest scale. According to Bain & Company, Indian SaaS companies will generate $30 billion in revenue by 2025, taking an 8% to 9% market share worldwide. Indian businesses will establish themselves as household names in various industries, including SaaS, ed-tech, crypto, finance, and B2B marketplaces, the survey claims.

Emerging landscape

Over the previous ten years, India has surged. India now has 850 million Internet users, up from just 50 million in 2011. The Indian economy has also changed. The GDP nearly doubled from $1.8 trillion in 2011 to $3.5 trillion in 2022. The amount of types of venture capital India has also increased significantly over the past ten years, going from $1 billion in 2011 to $65 billion in 2022. India has come a long way, from having one unicorn in 2011 to having 79 unicorns with a valuation of over $300 billion at the end of 2022.

Indian businesses have a competitive advantage due to the growing support of the founder community, their capacity to create cutting-edge products with a wealth of technical talent, access to a sizable domestic market, and innovative business models that are much more resilient in a volatile and heterogeneous environment. Compared to a decade ago, the founder community has expanded, developed, and become more self-assured. Additionally, it has been really heartening to see how Indian founders can help, encourage, and learn from one another in addition to investing in one another. The pool of developer talent is a significant competitive advantage for Indian companies.

But the nation possesses more than simply developer talent. India also has a wealth of other skilled professionals, including consultants, educators, writers, accountants, auditors, farmers, and factory employees. Take India's ed-tech boom as an example. Byju's growth in its home country, the US, and eventually internationally was aided by the Indian market. Like how huge the US and European customers have helped Zetwerk, corporate clients in India have allowed them to hone their products.

In 2018, Pristyn Care was founded by Garima Sawhney, a physician from the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences who previously worked at the Max Super Speciality Hospital and the CK Birla Hospital in Gurugram. Pristyn Care is a technological platform that uses extra space in hospitals to build multispecialty clinics and operation centres. It is supported by investors, including Sequoia and Tiger Global. With her husband Varun, Ghazal Alagh co-founded Honasa Consumer Private Limited, which trades as the modern skincare and body care company Mamaearth. Ghazal recently participated as a shark and investor on Shark Tank India, a prominent business show. Before a new Mamaearth product is released to the general public, Ghazal is renowned for testing it on her to look for adverse effects.

The way ahead

People are what propel businesses from theories to virtue. Any nation, especially one developing startups at a substantial rate, should prioritize investing in its human resources if it wants to increase production. To create an atmosphere that supports inclusive progress, India must create a winning culture that captivates and motivates the nation's best and brightest minds. Both the world and business have gone digital. Particularly in the technological sector, we can observe a severe lack of skills, which has prompted the emergence of tech giants, international banks, and several rapidly expanding startups. The globe would greatly benefit from India's talent pool as it strives for excellence.