DailyPost 1960
HAS START-UP CULTURE BECOME CONSUMERIST?
With the numbers of Start-ups showing exponential growth, and thousands joining their ranks every year, has the culture of creation remain intact? The culture of creation is at the core of creating an enterprise and more so, a tech one, which aims at sorting out a current problem or creating a new niche area, market, making a mark there. Social media itself is one of its creations and besides any number of others, which can be cited from virtual bookshops to the cloud. Aggregation has added an exponential dimension to the vision and dream of a start-up. At the core of it all, is the creation of a product or a process which can disrupt the current system beyond imagination. Anything that is not meeting these goals has an immense possibility of running into rough weather.
Bangalore happens to be one of top start-ups hubs across the world and so is India. The desperation to create is the driving force or has it become another flamboyant career, which can be tried. If second is the main propellant, then it fits into the start-up ecosystem of the day. What the founders of these companies are eyeing for, are investments, which come with little or no burden. The government has opened its coffers to make India transform through this route. Beyond it, we have an organized mechanized system from the seed funding to series A, B and God knows till where it goes for funding. Not denying that some amount of funding can really be helpful but at what cost is the issue? Has the model of organic growth gone out of fashion?
If organic growth model route is not favoured, then somewhere down the line the consumerist model takes over, which has plagued our individual existence has now started plaguing our enterprises and that too in the nascent stage itself. While the philosophy is that once funded the *Start-up need not bother about the daily rollercoaster ride of the running finances of the business and that they can concentrate on the actual creation,* taking it to the market and making it hugely commercially successful. It does not happen as simply as it sounds, either way. The investors are not angels, they are mercenaries. On the other side, once the Start-up gets the funding it is looking for, way beyond the actual requirements and capability to grow, it starts behaving like more than a grown up.
Their infrastructure, expenditure, costing, culture and mostly pace too, does not leave much time, energy, and focus to be the ultimate creator, which they had set out to be. Money with it brings complexities and any number of regulatory issues, which have to performed diligently and with a conscience. Start-up founder is a creator with a business conscience. Financial irregularities are meant for the mortals and not for visionary creators, otherwise they would embroil in those, not fit to deliver. Then the urge of founders to be celebrities, diluting further the effort. Camera, media and business do not work hand in hand. The recent BharatPe episode can be a case in point. The founders and creators transform themselves into luxurious celebrities, which this country can ill afford. Only a sane Start-up revolution can deliver the moon to this country.
STRATUP FOUNDER IS A CREATOR WITH A BUSINESS CONSCIENCE.
Sanjay Sahay