Don't fall for 'startup romance,' says Edelweiss MF CEO Radhika Gupta. 'Reality hits soon'

Radhika Gupta, managing director and chief executive officer of Edelweiss Mutual Funds.

Edelweiss Mutual Funds CEO Radhika Gupta has asked entrepreneurs to be wary of the "startup romance" that has been trending in the country since most successful businesses only show the rosy side of things and leave out the hard parts.

"There is now an increased air of 'startup romance' that paints startup life as working in chiller attire out of a fancy co-working space, talking ideas all day, raising funding rounds, giving gyaan on social media, hosting Fri Eve drinks for colleagues," Gupta said. "Don't fall for it."

She added that "startup reality" hits soon when entrepreneurs have to face painful execution, limited budgets, and even more limited working conditions, constant rejection, challenges in hiring and retention, pressure for revenue at any cost, and uncertainty for a "very long period of time".

In an incident that highlighted a different set of problems that startup founders face, the co-founder and CEO of a telemedicine startup said that he had to move cities after facing bias 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.