Sramana Mitra writes:
In todays India, the commodity in short supply is good entrepreneurs. In VC parlance, fundable deals are few and far between. Why?
Historically, India has been the worlds back-office. Consequently, the skill-set that has developed in India is that of engineering management and coding. The specifications are provided by teams elsewhere. Elsewhere, the market studies get done. Indian managers do not understand global technology markets. They have hardly had opportunity to learn this aspect of business. Entrepreneurs try to position products without knowledge of the product marketing discipline.
The natural instinct for Indian entrepreneurs is to build outsourcing services companies. BPO. Software Development. Chip Design. Those ventures take less capital, and become revenue generating fast. None of the Operating Loss period of a pure play product company is necessary, and hence, venture capital is also unnecessary.
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Venture capitalists will continue to go on their eco-tourism trips to India, then return. In the words of Marcel Proust, The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
