New wave Entrepreneurs creating jobs

PM Modi, in one of his speeches when he had barely taken up the reins of the country,  told that newly minted graduates must not go seek a job, but create jobs. When a person takes a job, he or she deprives another. But when he does a Start Up, he creates as the every least one additional job, normally 3 or 4.

The Govt set up a Startups fund of Rs 10,000 cr to assist entrepreneurs fund their companies. This fired up the imagination of the country, with graduates exploring this option even while in college. Dreams of the success of the entrepreneurs in the Valley in USA became achievable, and hundreds if not thousands start-ups came into existence. 

Some instances of these new successes

Flipkart: The biggest online store in India selling consumer products. Flipkart was founded in 2007 by Sachin and Binny Bansal. It has received total funding of around 7.50 B in 19 rounds, by Softbank, Tencent, Tiger Global, Ebay etc. Employee strength is upwards of 30,000.

Ola Cabs: Ola is one of the world’s largest cab hailing companies, serving over 125 cities across India, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. Total funding 33.8 B in 21 rounds Investors like Temasek, Softbank, Tencent etc. Employees around 10,000.      

Paytm: India’s largest payments company. Founded by Shekhar Sharma. It has a total funding of USD 2.3B in 5 funding rounds by investors like Alibaba,  Berkshire, Softbank etc. Valuation 10B at last funding. Employees around 20,000.

OYO Rooms: It’s a hospitality and budget service hotel network. It’s a technology driven chain of budget hotels, with over 7000 budget hotels. Founded by Ritesh Agarwal in 2013. Total funding of USD 1.7 Billion. Employees around 15,000

Zomato: A restaurant search and discovery app that provides information and reviews. Founded in 2008 by Deepender and Pankaj Chadda. Funding of USD 750 million 

In India, traditional jobs have been in the small scale sector. While this continues to hold the big job opportunities, this sector has stopped creating any big numbers. This is because small scale manufacturing units are not seeing growth, and not many new units being set up. No new incentives are being offered by govt to make SSI sector competitive to the imports from China and other manufactured products.  But what we have in abundance in India is well educated your people in India with brains of the highest quality and who can drive new age businesses, and that should become the going forward Mantra. Millions of jobs can be created in the intellectual sector in India. 

These and many other success stories have also encouraged others to start their own stories. Most start-ups provide an average of 10 jobs though the really successful ones provide jobs to hundreds if not thousands. This new age businesses are creating many more jobs than the traditional ones. The growth is coming from the new businesses as they ramp up based on funding from investors. There are a lot of old types of businesses which are either steady or reducing staffing creating reductions in jobs opportunities. Not many are now starting businesses which follow age old practices, all young people want to be start-ups in new age business. Manufacturing is no longer a jobs driver, Large scale plants are not going up in recent times. Those which are coming up are mainly highly automated ones requiring less people and more machines.    

But however it’s not all doom and gloom. The government needs to encourage new evolving businesses, new age tech, e-commerce, and such, which are the real jobs drivers as elicited in the above cases. India is ready to take on the world. We have the brains, technology and the drive of young population.      

By VikashMittersain(Chairman & Managing Director, Nazara Technologies Ltd & Founder & President, India Business Group Chamber of Commerce)