How strong is the Indian startup-investor ecosystem?
Investors from India and across the world turning to India in the hopes to discover the next Facebook or the next Amazon and are pumping in money for the same but this has also led to an increase in pressure on start-ups to scale operations as quickly as possible. In some cases, the most recent being the well-publicised one of Housing.com, it might lead to disharmony and acrimony between investor and founders. According to some theories that emerged after the exit of CEO Rahul Yadav, the investors were forcing Housing.com to expand more quickly than the company was ready to, which led to the confrontation.
Most start-ups and investors we spoke with agreed that this was usually not the case.
Alok Kejriwal, Founder of Games2win, who also doubles up as a mentor and investor, maintains that the start-up ecosystem is a healthy one though he agrees that we need to see more entrepreneurs. Giving his thoughts on Housing.com incident, he said, “They (Housing.com) had no maturity. When did arrogance ever give a dividend anywhere? Knowing how to behave in society, this comes from upbringing or taking the advice of the mentor.”
Similarly, Sameer Narkar, Founder and CEO of Mumbai-based Konnect Social opines that investors are usually highly optimistic about B2C models though this is the first time, he says, that he has heard of an incident like this in India. “Having too much money right at the outset can also become a problem,” he suggests.
However, this does not mean that there is no pressure to scale or expand.
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