Though there are thousands of startups and hundreds getting funded
and countless people online to create in digital market and flourishing
startup echo system of India, Sharad Sharma is not happy. Sharad Sharma
is earliest startup mentor who is also most respected in Indian tech
industry. He is also angle investor active with two dozen of investment
and co-founder of ISPIRIT the Indian Software Production Industry Round-
Table. ISPIRIT held a closed door retreat called Product Nation Growth – PNGrowth for 200 selected startups to
see if these startups are prospective enough to become leaders in their
class either in domestic market or global and if they could be a forte
aimed at SaaS solution or even a cloud based customer support kit. It
was a real painful process. The entrepreneurs had to deal with unnerving
question from peers and co-hosts of the program, the professors from
Duke University and Stanford University.
ISPIRT held a closed door retreat in Mysore, last month for 200 chosen startups. Photo credit:
Ahimanikya Satapathy
Nobody
in the echo system actually calls a startup a prospective failure. The
VCs politely tell them to come again when they have more footing and the
mentors are poorly qualified to assess, said Sharad. PNGRowth with
volunteers from iSPIRIT and grants Universities was free and it showed
an unvarnished mirror of startups which was not gratifying though the
startups who attended represented the cream of Indian startup scene.
Sharad expected at least 60 out of 200 startups to come up to
expectation but it was only 14 which is clearly shows that we are
creating quantity but not quality. The sad part is the rest who are not
up to the mark do not even know it and are only wasting precious time
.the only persons benefited are test prep centers. This situation does
not solve the country’s economic issue. The Ecosystem needs to have
minimum success levels to get escape velocity which does not seem
possible by the result seen in retreat even conducted in Mysore.
