Bengaluru woes: Startup founder says he faced bias as he didn't study at IIT or speak Hindi

'I felt excluded because I didn't speak Hindi,' CEO and co-founder of iCliniq, Dhruv Suyamprakasam, said. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

The co-founder and CEO of a telemedicine startup that moved to Bengaluru has opened up about the challenges he faced after moving to the city, including biases from investors for not being an IIT alumnus and for not speaking Hindi.

Speaking to Business Insider, iCliniq's Dhruv Suyamprakasam said his family was from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu where his father, a first-generation entrepreneur, had a flourishing business. But when he launched his own company, Dhruv thought moving to Bengaluru. " I had read about the city being the center of the mainstream startup ecosystem. In 2010, moving to Bengaluru felt like the best decision for me as a founder," he told the publication.

"But it wasn't the best place for us. It's a place that expects companies to grow fast and fail fast. I didn't think it was the right pressure to put on a healthcare startup, which has no margin for errors and requires a lot of trust from people. We met investors who had expectations like getting 100 paid consultations in a day."

Dhruv said that there was a lot of bias from investors. "I felt excluded because I didn't speak Hindi, which is the most spoken language in India, and I did not go to college at the Indian Institute of Technology, the most coveted engineering school in the country. I also got some judgment for being from a small town many people had not heard of," he said.

These were among the reasons that convinced Dhruv that moving back to his hometown would be a better idea, and so after spending 16 months in Bengaluru, he shifted base again. But there were challenges back home as well.

"We faced issues with our internet connection, which we never had in Bengaluru, and there was no established startup community. But it gave us the space to grow at our own pace," he told Business Insider.

In 2016, Dhruv moved to Bengaluru again hoping for improved conditions and more inclusivity, but not much had changed for the healthcare industry so he ended up returning to his hometown again after 18 months.