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20 NOV, 2009, 01.39AM IST, VIVEK WADHWA, -Excerpts from an Article in The Economic Times
Startups: India’s new charmers
When the world thinks of the Indian technology sector, it imagines a nation of call centre workers and low
level computer programmers administering databases and updating websites. Few observers, even in
India, realise that the Indian technology sector has rapidly transformed into a giant R&D machine.
A host of brand name global multinationals have set up their own R&D operations in India. Intel designed
its six core Xeon processor exclusively in India. IBM has over 100,000 employees in India and they are
performing significant roles in most of its software development projects. Cisco is developing cutting edge
networking in Bangalore.
On my recent trip to India I started to see new signs of life in tech entrepreneurship. This to me, was a
real surprise. So far, all of the innovation has been in the labs of the multinationals who are performing
their R&D in India and by their outsourcing providers. But everywhere I looked, I found startups which
were really smart and hungry. Some were even doing things better than their Silicon Valley counterparts.
Not all of these startups are developing breakthrough technologies but many of them are solving
problems that US companies have thus far failed to solve and doing it with fewer resources.
I wasn't alone in my surprise and excitement. My colleague, writer Sarah Lacy, who is known as 'Valley
Girl' and is considered one of the leading experts on Silicon Valley startups was totally blown away when
she met Harpreet Grover, the founder of a Delhi-based education software firm, CoCubes.com. His firm is
developing software to automate the process of recruiting university students. The solution is so well
thought out, elegantly designed and innovative, that Sarah told Harpreet that this was easily the best
demo she had seen in two years. Sarah has met thousands of startups over the years including the
founders of products like Facebook, Twitter and Google.
(The guest writer is a visiting scholar at UC-Berkeley, director of research at the Center for
Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University and a senior research
associate at Harvard Law School)
Full Article available on http://goo.gl/QrGtd