Start-Up Companies In India Has A Very Bright Future Says Anup Pai
Mumbai: Anup Pai who comes from a small city in southwest Karnataka has launched his startup in the form of eSamudaay, an enabler of digital solutions for local and hyper-local businesses.
Started by Pai himself, the venture aims to provide digital solutions to every individual who has entrepreneurial aspirations – be it in cities or in towns and villages.
In a recent interaction with The Prevalent India, Anup Pai shared his view on startup in India and its future. Further, he also explained the objective behind this initiative of eSamujdaay.
Please share something about your present company and what you have been involved with these days?
This pandemic has been reflecting entrepreneurship in general on human activities in the per forward economy post in this financial year. There are two things I am doing broadly – one is creating a digital business in the box kind system which can be adopted by micro-entrepreneurs anywhere in India to run hyperlocal digital businesses of their own and the other is participating in the social network of entrepreneurs across India. I am basically trying to move in the intubation facility and other things from theory actual practice in being together as a network sub-investor and service provider to assist students in entrepreneurship. For the last four years, I’m proudly doing this.
What is the current stage of the start-ups in India and how do you see the future of startups in India?
I think startups of India are in two buckets one is I think people start by a particular group who are really enthusiastic kind of the entrepreneur which always had in India. Looking at the current definition of a startup will be the companies that are Tech Savvy. I think we are seeing more grounded ideas and new trends started from three-four years where people in forties and fifties are starting companies which is an extremely bright sign. Angel funding activity has also picked up. Numbers of new first-time investors are coming while people who are willing to understand the industry have got some professional backing themselves with their own money in an early stage. Technology startups and most of these activities are limited to Tier II and Tier III cities. Traditional business activities are also trying to reinvent where people who started their company and industries in the seventies’ nineties are also going through a transformation. If we look at both in activity-wise that are going accelerating trends is preferring entrepreneurship for having some exposure to the startup world. This is what I have seen started happening post-Covid which is growing quickly. The future is bright is what I can say.
Please tell me more about eSamudaay. What are the idea and the objective behind this initiative?
Having seen two major Recession that induced the financial market in 2001 and 2008 in wall street and the impacts that have happened on the Indian job market especially for engineering and MBA demanded a huge growth in the acceleration of entrepreneurship and digital adoption. Discussion it with my friends, I created software as a service concept called eSamudaay which is Basically digital business in the box so you have an entrepreneurial team that wants to start digital improvement in local areas, home delivery of essentials or in the content, anything in the hyper-local social commerce was faced. eSamudaay enables local entrepreneurship with DIY, guide it on digital business in a box plans through which they can set up their own digital business in the local area and then expand based on their own capabilities, aspiration, ambitions. eSamudaay came out as a response to the trend of an increase in demand for entrepreneurial opportunities, an increase in demand for digital adoption, and the solution that we can across is more decentralized. Giving the control in the hand of demand from local entrepreneurs including traditionally business focus families, business people in local areas combined with young people, and made carrier professionals who have migrated back to local areas leaving metros.
What is the impact of COVID on the startup ecosystem and how it is going to play a major role in the post-COVID scenario?
Fundamentally I think many business small models which were based on consumption growth or purely based on spending money to acquire users or consumers are already being funded significantly, There is some amount business failure that is currently going through as we already knew in May and June that most of the startup had the only runway of two-three months. I’m a part of some of these groups helping these companies reimagine themselves and reactivate activities in the new world which is all based on a core business fundamental. The good news is I think in digital adoption there are a huge number of opportunities across sectors. In the digital space, companies are finding new avenues to reinvent themselves. New energy, a new activity is coming to the startup world and those have now the benefits. I think costs for both are the talent perspectives as well as the collaboration perspective there more willing to collaborate, talent is also available with fewer expectations and costs involved. I think new companies have been created in the past as well as during financial crises this one is not just a financial crisis it is also a health crisis, social change, and psychological crisis for society in general. We can use this time to create a better foundation which I think most of us are doing.
What are your thoughts on Democratize Digital? How relevant it is in a country like India?
Overall let’s talk about money and wealth itself. In the last 20 years, wealth has become digital, but now we are very clear that wealth is based on information and derivation of information which is knowledge, so we are clearly in a knowledge economy and wealth is therefore digital. Digital now is your access to the application to the knowledge in a globalized or the network world. So the democratization of digital is more and the other thing is the digital tool is in hands of the common man right now. The concept of democratizing digital is basically getting a switch change where common people can use the digital tool at their disposal to be able to create wealth for themselves rather than the other way around. In the last 20 years of digital expansion that has happened primarily driven by the large platform. It’s been all about using human endpoints consumers as endpoint data collection kind of a network. It is about digital owning rather than the person owning a tool. here is a because control is going down local on setting the terms and more control and more of power.
The government is focusing more on the efforts on digitalization and a number of initiatives have been taken in this direction. What are your thoughts?
I think digital is the future because eventually free for information is what drives the economy and country. India has the latest trend in the digital economy, entire wealth is going to be created by information. Also, India is an information-rich country not just because of the youth. We have a diverse kind of population like freedom of speech, democracy, standardization in thought, and so on. India is would the richest country when it comes to information therefore digitization is able to harness the wealth for the benefit of the future generation. It should not only be the monopoly that diversifies directly, it should be more decentralized.
Talking about Aatmnirbhar is all about self-rule, being in control of your decision. It is a key message for most individuals. Aatmnirbhar is more of a philosophical message. I feel this is going to drive the right spirit. In the end, it is about creating the country, not the government. It is not about parties, not about ideologies, as a country we need to agree on the decisions taken by the government. Aatm Nirbhar is nothing Swaraj is a different form and it is a great philosophy to have not just about being responsible for yourself. It is going to drive more entrepreneurship whether it be the small business it’s going to add to the economy and GDP. I completely support both digitization and Aatmnirbhar in philosophy not as a political slogan.
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