Priyanka Sahay
Moneycontrol
Indian startups that are playing up the ‘home-grown’ card and asking the government to shut down the doors for global companies like China, shows that the companies are just losing confidence, said Saurabh Srivastava, chairman emeritus at TiE Delhi.
"I think, we are losing confidence ... there's no reason for that. We should just make sure that the environment is free and fair," Srivastava who is also the chairman and co-founder of Indian Angel Network (IAN) said while speaking to the media ahead of the TiE Global Summit in Delhi which is to begin on Friday.
Last week, e-commerce company Flipkart and cab hailing service Ola took the aid of nationalism demanding the government to create policies to favour home-grown firms against the global ones.
Notably, these firms are facing tough competition from global rivals Amazon and Uber, respectively.
Citing China’s example, Flipkart's executive chairman and co-founder Sachin Bansal said that Indian startups should accept capital from foreigners but not accept their companies in India.
According to media reports, Ola and taxi service provider Meru too have approached government agencies create policies to curb global rival Uber from offering steep discounts to customers.
"We underestimate ourselves too easily and are too afraid of competition," said Srivastava, criticising the move.
"This kind of a thing is very unfortunate. If you are a copy-cat model and the original shows up, you are at a disadvantage, to begin with," said Venkatesh Shukla, president at TiE Global. He also questioned the domestic startups’ urge to create a China like market asking 'which of these Chinese company is globally successful?'
Ironically, most of the capital invested across Indian startups come from investors sitting in the Silicon Valley. Flipkart has mostly been invested by US-based or simply non-Indian venture capital funds. The company migrated itself out of India a few years ago to Singapore. Thus, all the revenues are accounted for in the books of its Singapore based parent. It's not very dissimilar to an Amazon which has an Indian subsidiary and provides jobs to local citizens.
Srivastava also stressed that China had an inbuilt protection which is the Chinese language. India has no such protection.
"We should instead be pushing to fix last mile connectivity, increase the size of the market. I think we are focussing on the wrong side. India is a price sensitive market. You have to get the intersection of price and functionality right," he added.
Speaking on demonetisation, Srivastava said that the move will help the country go digital is a much faster way than would have normally happened, calling the inconvenience as a 'temporary scenario'.
"The problem with India is that if you leave everyone at their own pace, things never happens," he said.priyanka.sahay@network18online.com
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