Start-up fever grips young tech-savvy Indians
New generation are capitalising on their parents’ hard-won financial security and going it alone in pursuit of their business dreams
In the basement of a Bangalore building, hundreds of young Indians sit in neat rows of desks typing furiously, all dreaming of becoming the new Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.
A quarter of a century after liberalisation kick-started India’s economic transformation, a new generation of young people are capitalising on their parents’ hard-won financial security to try their luck in the risky business of tech start-ups.
“It’s really picking up,” says Aneesh Durg, a young Indian-origin student from Chicago who came to the southern tech hub of Bangalore to help develop a device that helps blind people read written text.
“It’s actually not what I expected it to be. I thought that they would be a little bit behind, but they are actually working just as hard and there’s really cool stuff coming out of India these days.”
India now has some 4,750 tech start-ups – the highest number in the world after the US and Britain, which it is fast catching up. Success stories include Flipkart, Amazon’s rival in India, and online supermarket Big Basket.
From robots and mobile apps to smart kitchens and a cocktail-making machine the cavernous Bangalore office, which houses one of India’s biggest start-up incubators, is a veritable ideas factory.