The Capital Question

Entrepreneurship is booming. Sustaining this requires massive R&D investment and more women in business

- Tarun Khanna

Entrepreneurship has exploded in India in recent decades, but is the past a prologue? I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, but I do think that India@75 has important lessons to learn as we move towards India@100.

With the rise of information technology behemoths and e-commerce, entrepreneurs have also risen, armed only with technical know-how, global awareness, modest access to capital and chutzpah in no small measure. To me, this unlocking of latent talent marks this era of entrepreneurship. Now, in 2022, India has the third-largest startup ecosystem globally, after the US and China, with over 65,000 recognised startups that have created over 7,00,000 jobs.

To understand whether the entrepreneurship trend will atrophy, just continue, or even accelerate, it makes sense to interrogate its foundations. To my mind, there are several reasons to be hopeful, and a couple to cause concern. Let me tackle the reasons for hope first.

Public- and private-sector cooperation has expanded: In my childhood in Mumbai, antagonism between business and government dominated. We’ve since gained a more pro-private sector stance where would-be entrepreneurs have mostly felt enabled.

We’ve even had the symbolically and substantively fascinating experiment of Nandan Nilekani, the ultimate private sector personality, going into government to develop Aadhaar, and thank goodness for that. The experience with that platform has been followed by the Unified Payments Interface and its catalytic effect on the adoption of digital payments. These are emblematic of India’s private sector entrepreneurial prowess being used for public good.