Indian startup founders need to have a hands-on approach: India Accelerator founder Ashish Bhatia

Startups in India are now allowed to thrive but it is yet to find an atmosphere where they are allowed to function without any roadblocks. Lack of sufficient survival tactics such as basic business plan, lack of mentoring, difficulty in seed funding lead to the death of early-stage startups, according to India Accelerator founder Ashish Bhatia.

After being in the startup ecosystem for a while, he realised that startups in the country face many challenges.

"The startups need to ask themselves that is there any need for their product in the market? Many of these startups are copying a product of US market. But they need to understand the preferences of customers," said Bhatia.

India Accelerator runs mentorship-driven incubation and acceleration programmes for startups in India. "We tried to launch few startups right from day one but we failed. We have lost almost Rs 50-60 lakh in failed startups because as an early stage accelerator, we had no idea of the startup ecosystem," he said.

After learning it the hard way, Bhatia set some parameters for the startups to qualify and realised that startups in India are lacking in basic qualities.

Strong and passionate team

"During our early days, we gave our nod to the founders who were part-timers. They had a job and a startup both and we perceived later that this will not work and started rejecting them. We noticed that the founders should be passionate about it and they should also have a strong team," he said.

Marketing the product

Startups need to understand that the product will work when they meet their customer face to face. "The idea, while at a listening stage, may seem very nice but the startups need to realise that the product does not work inside four walls. They need to go out. So we ask them to get 4-5 customers who will buy their product and talk to them," said Bhatia.

Startup IQ

Sustaining a business is a major task for a startup and for that they need a business plan and innovation. "We noticed that the startup IQ in our country is very low. They need to learn the basics of the business," he said.

Lack of mentors and seed stage investing

"Every startup needs support, mentoring to grow. US startups have low fatality rate because they are in the ecosystem for 3-4 decades. They have figured out a way to run their startups. They have an accelerator in every small town and almost every startup undergoes the accelerator programme. But the ecosystem is not same in India," he said.

Bhatia also realised that the Indian startup ecosystem requires a huge amount of funding at a seed stage level. He said, "Indian startups face two main challenges -- entry and exit. Entry for them is constrained because of lack of seed stage funds. Here it is easy to raise Series A, B and others but difficult to raise seed stage fund because of the risks involved," he said.