The most successful Indian startups have copied thriving business ideas from the West: Flipkart borrowed from the Amazon model, Ola from Uber, and Oyo is an AirBnB lookalike. Zomato, India’s first listed food-tech company, expanded to food delivery inspired by DoorDash and other food delivery apps overseas. Many of these startups had the first mover’s advantage, they attracted funding from investors, survived competition from later entrants and lived to see the light of the day. They must be complimented for their success and maturation as viable businesses. Slushed with easy liquidity in the post-Covid era due to benign central bank monetary policies, many startups with no actual worth or problem-solving abilities received funding at higher valuations. The bubble burst and many fell by the wayside.
It is time for the Indian startup apparatus to rewire for the next maturation phase. Chinese startups also began by copying the Americans, but quickly adapted, innovated and filed their own patents. For Indian startups to revise their strategy, mainly investing in R&D and the latest tech-enabled solutions, support must come from the government, big business and other investors. Investing heavily in foundational technologies that can become building blocks for later-stage innovations would be a start. For India to achieve this, the change in approach must happen at all levels—founders, investors and policymakers.
