Culture and foundation: the pillars of a startup in India

Photo credit: McKay Savage

As we concluded SNS 2015, it was time for me to head towards Silicon Valley in order to update our strong NRI community on how India transformed in the last 10 years and what does real India look like unlike what our fellow media portrays about us.

This was my second trip to San Francisco in less than a month to finalise the board of Startup India and build a stronger support between the Indian startup community and our counterparts in the US. The reason we decided to engage with the NRI community wasn’t to secure capital or office address for startups, but actually the support was in building the foundation and ability to think big for our local entrepreneurs.

US has been fascinating me for sometime now, not because of its technology and development but primarily because of its thinking, philosophy and the culture of acceptance and failures.

I have been fortunate to have an association with United States for almost 5 years now, starting from Wiser.Org the organisation which helped me in highlighting some of the most positive stories from India and bring some real change makers in front of people aspiring to support positive change across the country.

Post that, last 4 years have been the most impactful and insightful in my life with Startup Weekends, which allowed me to build real entrepreneurs and startups besides connecting with friends from almost 130 countries and provide support and knowledge to some of the developing regions.

One thing which US surely taught you was the ability to think big, scale and have a larger impact through simplified methods and tools. Once you put those into your real life, the world surely starts changing around you.

As we enter into 2016, it’s always important to ensure the work doesn’t stop and for the ones like me who are always striving for a larger impact, the challenge was to ensure the growth of impact, develop the right culture and lay the right foundation and road.bbu

While 2015 was a heavy year, with loads of travel, exposure and new beginnings, it also gave me time to think on my own approach and vision through some bumpy roads and pot holes. Sometimes, they are just around us, but we are so busy building the highway, we forget about the bumpy entry points around us, which keep getting deeper as we ignore them and create a trouble before entering the highway.

Fortunately, most of the bumps and pot holes were fixed while few would settle as we put the load on them. 2016 is approaching with positivity, right drivers and a strong foundation.

In order to do so, it was important to understand from where do we source this culture, foundation, energy and the drivers who understand the rules of the road.

The challenge was to preserve our existing culture and build the foundation over that which needed us to source the right blend to balance it all. If we understand about the foundation and culture, a lot of it was in place till mid 90’s, but somehow it faded away as we entered the 21st century. And now the challenge was to find this blend which understands the modern 21st century but is also well versed with the old culture and foundation.

This hunt ended in Silicon Valley, where some of the most experienced, successful and well versed professionals were always figuring out ways to reconnect with their roots and support their own country while we were always looking for the right sources who can support us at this complex junction which lays the foundation of our future generations.