According to Kunal Shah Founder & CEO of Freecharge & Chairman IAMAI, doing a start-up is not an easy task. Speaking at the IAMAI’s 10th Digital India Summit, Shah said, “Ten years of Digital India Summit is quite fascinating. The world of start-ups is great, but the survival of a start-up is difficult and that is a reality.”
The total funding in Indian based start-ups was estimated to be nearly $5 billion for the year 2015. But Shah believes that chasing funds is not the key to success. Companies, who have not even started are talking about raising funds, which makes no sense.
Another major challenge that Shah mentioned was the trend of hiring excess people in companies. “We still have a fascination to hire thousands of people in the company. I don’t think anyone can become innovative with lot of human capital. Abundance is something which is against innovation. In such case 80 percent of the energy goes towards solving in-house issues related to human capital, instead of paying attention on competition or industry challenges.”
As the world is getting more and more connected the self-life of any business is now probably 4-5 years. If you’re not competent, somebody else will do it faster than you can. That is something most people are not prepared for.
Instead of chasing funds, Shah suggested that one should try to understand its TG. It is very important to spend time with actual customer to understand the demand in the market, which will eventually help in making strategy.
With 150 million smartphone users, Shah believes that now is the right time for start-ups, as actual internet revolution starts now.
“This is the perfect time for a start-up, but if you don’t understand the ecosystem your success rate will remain low. Business model needs to be much stronger and deeper to battle some of the things that exist today. I don’t see enough quality coming. I see very shallow approaches in the start-up ecosystem. It’s not enough to attend such events and read books hoping to create some magic with your start-up,” concluded Shah.
