A friend told me I should have been careful about operating in the SMS business, and weighed the risk factors carefully. I thought about that statement. In today’s business age, one considers competition and other such factors. That a regulator and government will arbitrarily change rules to destroy an industry – what does that tell us? How do you factor that in for any industry?
This is not the India we should be building. We have seen this before. Our parents and grandparents lived through this licence raj in India. We don’t want to.
Fifteen years ago, I faced a challenge on another Diwali Day that threatened a business. This Diwali was no different from a business challenge perspective. For an entrepreneur, optimism and the ability to rise above mundane difficulties are two attributes that are always needed in abundance. And there will be newer opportunities. But that’s for the future. As I always tell myself and my colleagues, the best ideas come when the chips are down.
In all this optimism, one fact stays. The government has shaken our confidence in being able to provide fair regulation for all. Some injuries are hard to forget, and the past month’s actions by TRAI fall in that category. Let us hope the actions in the coming days help reverse that.
