Eradicate Corruption – Build a new India

Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the apex integrity institution of the country which endeavors to promote integrity, transparency, and accountability in public life has notified that this year Vigilance Awareness Week would be observed from 29^th October 2018 to 3^rd November 2018 with the following theme:

“Eradicate corruption – Build a New India”.

With an aim to generate awareness and encourage participation at large, the Commission has also envisaged the concept of Integrity Pledge. As such two integrity pledges are available urging support and commitment from:

1. The citizens
2. Corporates/entities/firms

The online “Integrity Pledge” is available on the CVC’s website http://www.cvc.nic.in. OR https://pledge.cvc.nic.in/

Please visit https://pledge.cvc.nic.in/ and take the pledge.

Let’s take the pledge for corruption free India.

EDII-ASSOCHAM Study Identifies Emerging Areas

After the dot-com boom in the 1990s and early 2000s, the startup has been a new buzzword. However this boom has also started settling down – as many as 45% to 50% of the startups stumble right at the inception level, says ‘Entrepreneurs India: Gains & Misses,’ a background paper prepared by Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) and the Associated Chambers of Commerce And Industry of India (ASSOCHAM). The paper was released to mark the World Entrepreneurs Day recently in Delhi.

According to the paper, the inception to seed stage sees the exit of about half of the ventures that have the average funding of $200,000-250,000. The number goes down as ventures mature. At the growth and expansion stage, the mortality rate is about 10% where the venture funding is about $25 million.

Sunil Shukla, the director of EDII, said that a number of factors are responsible for the trend, including lack of funds and scalability issues. “On the brighter side, a number of government and private initiatives are supporting new ideas and we see better-equipped ventures now,” he said. “Hand-holding is needed the most at the initial stage on multiple issues.”

Talking about Gujarat, Shukla said that the state has seen an emergence of startups in the manufacturing sector.

“We also have huge potential in terms of inter-institutional collaborations,” he said. “Why can’t a student entrepreneur get design feedback from NID and marketing/operational tips from IIM-A?”

The paper says that healthcare, education, and financial inclusion along with technology in sectors such as sanitation, agriculture, and energy are future areas for Indian Startups. In 2017, the highest funding was attracted by startups in hyperlocal/consumer services sector, enterprise tech, and e-commerce.

Comparing startup policies of different states, the paper advocates the amalgamation of good practices and also cited examples from countries such as the US, Canada, and Singapore – the countries with a high number of successful ventures.

Women, Student Entrepreneurs on rise:

The paper says that India at the moment ranks third in the world in terms of startup incubators/accelerators with 192 centers ahead of countries such as Israel, Of the total, 92 are with academic institutions, 65 with private entities, 20 with corporate and 15 with government organizations. Student entrepreneurs thus are getting an early platform, Kavita Saxena, a faculty member at EDII and a co-author of the paper, said that it’s a misnomer that women entrepreneurs are associated with specific areas. “About 21% of tech startups have women as partners. The number is 17% in education and 4% in healthcare,” she said, adding that women are also venturing out of family businesses.

India’s Startup Ecosystem

Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR account for 68% of total startups.

Investment in startups – Approximately $13.7 bn in over 820 deals.

Major Areas of growth – Health tech 28%, Finance tech 31%, E-commerce – 13%

Number of active incubator/accelerator units – 192

Addition of new startups in 2017 – 1,000+

Source: TOI, 15 Sept 2018

India ranks third globally in terms of the number of family-owned-businesses with 111 companies having a total market capitalization of $893 billion. India closely follows China with 159 firms and the US with 121 firms, says a report.

According to the ‘Credit Suisse Family 1000 in 2018’ study, published by the Credit Suisse Research Institute(CSRI), in terms of a number of family-owned businesses within the non-japan Asian region, the list is dominated by China, India and Hong Kong. These three jurisdictions together account for around 65% of the non-Japan Asian section of CSRI’s database and have a combined market capitalization of $2.8 trillion (or 71%) of the market share.

Korea came in fourth place, with 43 companies($434-billion market capitalisation), followed by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillippines and Thailand, each with 26 companies, There port covered 11 markets in the non-Japan Asian region, which continue to dominate and represent a 53% share of the universe, with a total market capitalisation of over $4 trillion.

The report further noted that in 2017 alone, non-Japan-Asia- Based family-owned companies generated 25.6% greater cash flow return on investment (CFROI) than their non-family-owned counterparts, and delivered a 4.2% outperformance in annual average share price return since 2006.

Credit Suisse head analyst (thematic investments) and the report’s lead author Euge-ne Klerk said, “ This year, we find family-owned businesses are continuing to outperform their peers in every region, every sector, whatever their size. We believe this is down to the longer-term outlook of family-owned businesses relying less on external funding and investing  more in research and development.”

Indian family-owned companies generated a 13.9% annual average share price return since 2006, compared to 6% recorded by their non-family-owned peers, the report said. Further, out of the top 50 most profitable companies globally, 24 were from Asia, with a total market capitalization of $748 billion. The list included 12 Indian family-owned companies with a total market capitalization of $192 billion.

Additionally, in non-Japan Asia, more than 50% of the top 30 best-performing companies are from India, followed by one-third from China. Malaysia occupies third place with three companies, while Korea and Indonesia each have one, the report added.

India, a land of diversity is currently keeping up the pace with growth and prosperity. India as a nation has been witnessing the development in almost all areas. Nevertheless, all the sections of the society need to partake in this prosperity. The marginalized sections of the society also need to envision, create and scale-up ventures to be a major participant in this growth story.

With an aim to enable the socio-economic empowerment of the SC/ST communities, the Government of India has launched the National SC/ST Hub. It is an initiative for developing a supportive ecosystem towards SC/ST entrepreneurs.

In this regard, the Ministry of MSME is promoting a capacity-building program for Skill development of SC ST MSEs with a collaboration of training institutes. These training programs are offered free of cost to SC/ST candidates by the Ministry of MSME under this scheme.

Following the same objective, EDII Ahmedabad has launched six Entrepreneurship Development Programmes for SC-ST Community. Out of total six programmes, two programmes are residential at EDII, campus, and other four programmes are non-residential at a suitable location of Ahmedabad city. Presently EDII Ahmedabad is inviting applications from all over Gujarat. These programmes are specifically aimed for existing as well as aspiring entrepreneurs.

Programme Date: 22 October 2018 and 24 December 2018

Who can apply: Existing as well as aspiring entrepreneurs from SC-ST Community.

Age limit: 18 to 40 years.

Place: EDII Ahmedabad campus

For registration queries: Reach to 079-23969161/163 (Prakash Solanki)

You may reach via a Mail on psolanki@ediindia.org

Download the application form here: http://www.ediindia.org/Docs/14Sep2018012754AM.pdf

Amid the tough competition in the market to stand out differently from competitors, startups are in the race to update themselves with latest trends that can lay the foundation of their success and make them stand out in the market. While 2017 has witnessed 57 startups becoming unicorns, the year 2018 is full of AI, IOT, and blockchain technology. It can impact largely on the market.

Since the year 2018 has been keeping its pace with current trends; here are some of the trends in the startup world that can revolutionize the entire market scenario.

Internet of things: Internet of things is something to look out for in years to come. Interestingly, 20 billion devices are currently connected to the internet. Hence, IoT will become the backbone of the customer value and the IoT infrastructure will shift to an edge to provide cloud intelligence.

Workplace: The physical workspace as we know it today is going to significantly change next year as businesses start to get smart about how they use space to drive productivity and adapt to new employee behaviors and tech tools.

Economical change: Digitization and the sharing economy will disrupt more industries. Already, retail (Amazon), automotive (Uber), and the server market (Google, Amazon) have been disrupted – and we have had two years without another major industry being disrupted.

Marketing: Marketing would be the next big thing in the market with the rapid expansion of technology. An ever-growing demand for a new update in the technology, marketing would play a vital role in deciding the future of the company.

Virtual reality: Virtual reality has dominated the digital marketplace, raising expectations among consumers and investors. With virtual reality’s growth across industries, the developing technology’s impact continues to take shape. For the world’s brightest tech start-ups, leveraging the latest advancements in VR offers massive opportunity for cross-industry growth.

So these are the some of the trends start-ups should look out for ensuring massive success in their business while standing out from their competitors in the cut-throat competition.

It takes sweat, dedication, and commitment to be an entrepreneur; you have to be competent enough to sail through all the hardships starting from having an idea, implementing it, seeking advice, hiring, money management, business strategy etc. In short, entrepreneurs face many challenges in today’s ultra-competitive business world. Though it could be stressful to tackle all the challenges in an efficient manner, they already have more resources to sail through all the challenges amid the widespread competition. Here we have listed out some of the challenges that entrepreneurs have to go through to operate an efficient and successful business.

Time management: For every new entrant in the market of start-ups, time management can be the biggest problems ever faced. They always have to tackle all sorts of tasks in a timely manner to accomplish the objectives. It could be stressful to implement time management in an effective manner.

Cash flow: From paying everything from your employees or contractors to your mortgage to your grocery bill, cash flow is essential to small business survival, yet many entrepreneurs struggle to pay the bills while they are waiting for checks to arrive. Hence, it becomes crucial to managing cash flow timely to run a successful business.

Team Building: It’s the most challenging task if you’ve never run or managed a team before. It seems daunting to select a right people to fit in the role. Not only you’ve to find the candidates who’ll handle the role but also have to consider the other factors like their cost to the business, their culture fit and how they’d work as a team.

Recruitment: The hiring process can take several days of your time: reviewing resumes, sitting through interviews, sifting through so many unqualified candidates to find the diamonds in the rough. Then, you only hope you can offer an attractive package to get the best people on board and retain them long-term.

The vision for future: In a competitive world, one has to be visionary as a founder of startup to come up a with a response plan at any time given the rise of competitors in the market. When your startup is hit by an obstacle, it becomes inevitable to find out an alternative plan to move forward.

Marketing strategy: Marketing strategy could be as vital as effective to maximize your return on invested amount. You have to select from multiple sources like print, online, advertising, mobile etc. However, it takes a lot of time to choose the right marketing medium to stand out among other competitors in the market.

Stress: Starting out as an entrepreneur is a stressful endeavor. As a responsible entrepreneur, you are bound to keep multiple things on track while setting out the goals for the company. There is no larger company structure to provide a cushion for when things go sour. So you’ve to be on your toe every time to run a successful startup.

Amid soaring competition, entrepreneurs face many challenges. However, you can get through it while keeping perseverance and intelligence as your allies. To ensure the success, try to hustle hard to fetch all the possible resources and step up effectively to a ladder of successful business.

In a bid to build on and widen the scope of its payment offering, Amazon India’s payments unit, Amazon pay has acquired all in one services platform, Tapzo in a deal valuing the startup at about $40 million. It will ramp up its digital payments business in the country.

Tapzo CEO Ankur Singla did not respond to queries. While Amazon declined to comment on the acquisition, the company underlined its intent to enable digital payment offerings with maximum outreach.

Tapzo co-founders Ankur Singla and Vishal Pal Chaudhary are set to get some cash and shares of the Seattle-based online retail giant, one person said, adding that the deal was completed last week. They will join the Amazon Pay team in India and help build up the platform.

Interestingly, Amazon India announced the launch of bill payments under Amazon Pay on Tuesday, enabling recharges and payments for electricity, landline, broadband, gas and mobile phone bills. This new service offering comes on the back of the Tapzo acquisition, said one of the people.

Tapzo has been actively aggregating a number of app-based services – such as Uber, Ola, food delivery services Swiggy and Zomato, Book My Show, bill payment service BillDesk and more — into a single app.

The services offered by Tapzo will connect with the Amazon Pay’s strategy and will be subsumed into the Amazon Pay app.

Tapzo platform and its technology, along with the founders, will be a significant needle mover for Amazon Pay, which is locked in a battle with PhonePe and Paytm for a sizeable share of the market and is looking at services to boost transaction frequency.

Disruptive Innovation – what is it & how start-ups can adopt it

The theory of disruptive innovation was introduced by Clayton Christensen, more than thirty years ago. This theory refers to innovation that creates a new market while disrupting or displacing an existing market. It is a process wherein a product or service begins at the bottom of the market and steadily moves up market, eventually displacing established market leaders, competitors and products.

The theory of disruptive innovation is a powerful tool for entrepreneurs and start-ups and needs to be incorporated as a part of their business strategies so as to secure competitive advantage and drive sustainable growth.

For a new entrant to successfully challenge an established company’s business, the needs of the market’s lower segment have to be surveyed and analysed. Most established companies concentrate on the higher tiers of the market, which have been profitable segments for them. These companies focus on improving their products and services by continuous innovation attempting to fulfil the demands of their most profitable customers and land up upgrading their products faster than their customer’s needs evolve. These sustaining innovations result in developing products that are too sophisticated, complicated and very expensive and remain accessible only to the elite customers or to the top, yet smaller segment of the market. While serving these demands, the company tends to ignore the needs of the others or the larger segment of the market.

This is the segment where the start-ups need to focus on. By successfully targeting these overlooked segments and delivering quality products that are suitably functional yet inexpensive, the new entrants are able to gain a strong foothold in the market. Once ready to deliver more, they can move upmarket and tend to the more demanding segment, while preserving their initial customers. Although it may take a little longer to become popular in the top segment, once the product clicks, it won’t take long for the start-up to flourish and eventually deliver higher profits. With persuasion, innovation and quality maintenance, success of the start-up is guaranteed. The transition of the mainstream customers from an established company to adopting the new entrant’s product and services is the result of a successful attempt of disruptive innovation.

With a population of over 1.342 billion and increasing by the second, a country such as India should be medically sound and financially stable but unfortunately it is just the opposite. With a heavily rising population, the rise in communicable diseases is apparent and with unstable financial conditions, rising ‘lifestyle’ diseases is common. With the country’s existing infrastructure, catering to the growing healthcare demands is difficult. A majority of the Indian population is living below the poverty line and depends on the under-financed and short-staffed public sector for its healthcare needs.
The private sector dominates the healthcare industry across India with a majority of healthcare professionals concentrated around urban areas with high paying consumers while the rural areas remain ignored and their healthcare needs unmet.

Challenges for India’s Healthcare Industry:
1. Population: Being the world’s second-largest populated country with an ever increasing migration – in-between neighbouring countries, across state borders and from rural settlements to urban areas.

2. Infrastructure: Citizens can avail of healthcare services, free treatment and medication at government hospitals but the facilities are not up to mark, are under-staffed and under-financed which forces patients to visit private hospitals and medical practitioners. India’s existing infrastructure is not enough to meet the healthcare needs of a growing country.

3. Insurance: According to the data from Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, 76% of Indians do not have a health insurance. The Indian Government’s contribution towards insurance stands at 32% as opposed to 83.5% in the UK. Also, India’s healthcare expenditures are one of the lowest in the world.
For the eyes of an entrepreneur, these challenges shall come as opportunities, in fact the present Indian healthcare industry presents numerous openings and untapped opportunities. The lack of trained medical resource and insufficient infrastructure in the public health domain are enough reasons to stir an entrepreneur’s mind with innovative ideas relating to healthcare solutions which shall help eradicate major voids in services and healthcare delivery across the country.

Entrepreneurs who aspire to make a difference can survey the rural areas and evaluate the extent to which our countrymen are deprived of medical aid and aim to set up hospitals in smaller towns and villages which are designed to operate at minimalist costs.

Entrepreneurs who can invest may work towards developing low-cost solutions for healthcare such as, diagnostic kits for rural households, cheaper surgery options, low-cost dialysis technology, and low-cost pathological laboratory, etc. thereby accelerating the country’s social and economic growth by making quality healthcare facilities available to the below average income group. Entrepreneurs must ensure that the work towards developing low-cost solutions for healthcare does not compromise with the quality of healthcare service delivered.

Telemedicine and remote care is a boon in rural India since it provides access to doctors to a large population of under-served people. Developing a telemedicine centre for every district hospital will not only reduce the burden on one hospital but also reduce the patient’s number visits to the hospital. Telemedicine ensures that a large number of remotely placed people are cared for minor health issues without the need to visit the district hospital, which may be way too far to reach. While minor medical cases can be treated over the phone, the ones that are more serious can be called for personal examination and further treatment.

The digital boom and internet penetration is a huge opportunity for growth of healthcare services. Owing to new technology, innovative solutions aimed to provide quick, reliable and effective medical facilities in the rural areas can be developed enhancing communication between doctors and patients. The increase in internet and data usage makes way for innovative mobile applications and e-health portals such as blood bank services and online pharmacies.

Emergency medicine and healthcare is an excellent opportunity for innovation. Entrepreneurs may invest in developing very well equipped ambulance services ready for critical intervention. Employing doctors, nurses and paramedics trained in emergency response techniques is a progressive thought in a country where pre-hospital care is virtually non-existent in rural areas. By launching educational and training departments to prepare resources ready to tackle emergency & trauma and ambulances equipped with critical care units, an entrepreneur shall not only be making a difference by investing but shall be investing for the good of mankind and towards the nation.

Patient care does not end with the patient’s hospital discharge. Most out-patients need treatment once they are back home. Entrepreneurs can develop centres for Medicare and Medicaid which shall have a home healthcare system in place wherein skilled practitioners can provide care to patients in their homes under the direction of a physician. While assisting the patients to recuperate at home and avoiding hospitalisation, the healthcare services should aim at promoting patients’ optimal level of well-being and helping them in improving their functions so that they can live a life of greater independence and fulfilment. Post-treatment patient care is an important feature in healthcare services where patient safety and quality are important aspects and must be adhered to.

Post the Clinical Establishments Act of 2010, some Indian states have worked towards having a better access to affordable healthcare, it is way lower if compared with other developing countries and knowing that India has a long way to go, increases the plethora of opportunities and innovations. The healthcare sector is emerging as the new sunshine industry which make setting up an entrepreneurship in healthcare an excellent business opportunity.

Government of India and leading financial institutions like HDFC, LIC, UTI, SBI promote Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) to implement projects related to clusters and education in African countries. IL&FS Education and Technical Services (IETS), a wholly owned subsidiary of IL&FS approached EDII to organize in-country orientation programmes on Entrepreneurship Development.

IETS, the Programme Management Agency of GoI’s Department of Commerce assigned the task to EDII under the aegis of 2nd India Africa Forum Summit (IAFS II) to carry out orientation programmes in six African countries Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria, Uganda and Malawi to strengthen cotton sector. Associate Senior Trainer at EDII, Mr. S.B. Sareen conducted orientation programmes in two African Countries Benin, Cotonou (West Africa) and Abuja, Nigeria from 1st March to 5th March.

The programmes chiefly aimed at sharpening entrepreneurial skills and changing the mindset about entrepreneurship. The programme was well received by the participants. Officials of Government Institutions, Financial Organizations and potential as well as existing entrepreneurs participated in the programme.

Mr. S.B Sareen, the Course Director was contented with overwhelming response to the programme. He said, “The programme encouraged private sector, support system and Government to boost entrepreneurship in African countries.”