Five major challenges faced by Indian startups

One keeps coming across conversations that focus on when would India provide or start producing the next Googles or Facebooks? After all, many Indians have played a key role in turning the Silicon Valley as the global innovation- hub. While nobody may have a conclusive answer to the question posed above but nevertheless many startups have recently emerged in India, especially in the field of internet commerce.

Despite frenetic activities (by the Indian standards) on the startup scene, it hasn’t been a smooth ride for the entrepreneurs. In this blog I will focus on major challenges being faced by startups in India. I have tried to incorporate views of some of my friends who did give entrepreneurship a try. While some of have them have returned to become private naukars again, others are still part of the former breed.

Bihar: The road-map to prosperity

For the past few weeks, I have been going through various panel discussions, books, blogs & news articles, both national and international that had some relevance or relation to Bihar. Through this blog dedicated to Bihar, my focus will be on laying out a roadmap for a prosperous Bihar. I will include the findings from the above exercises as well as inputs from discussions that I had with my Bihari as well as non-Bihari friends. Let us now start our expedition.

The Theory of Relativity

Friends, just like most of us, even I am not fascinated by the complexity of Science. So you can be rest assured that this post is not about scientific applications of the theory of relativity. But the essence is derived from it. That’s why this theory assumes so much importance as it touches us every day. Let’s explore how?

Einstein's theory of time and space, special relativity, proposed that distance and time are not absolute. The ticking rate of a clock depends on the motion of the observer of that clock; likewise for the length of a "yardstick.” So if you haven’t guessed yet, this post is about Relative Grading. A much used term in academic set up especially in the past few decades. As the common saying goes, “Nothing is absolute, everything is relative.”

This is how IITK introduces Relative Grading, “Many ideas and things were shipped from Washington DC to Kanpur. When a packet from one of these shipments was opened, a brilliant proposal of adopting "relative grading" emerged. And IIT Kanpur was amongst the first, in the country to adopt this relative method of evaluating performance.” Their inputs have been used in the following paras to shed more light on this topic.

Is regulation the only way to create sustainable cities?

There has been too much emphasis off late on regulations being the only way to create sustainable cities. Through this blog, I would like to express my opinion on the above mentioned topic. 

I think we can play with the question a bit i.e. we can aim at creating self-sustaining cities rather a sustaining one. This is because one of the prerequisites for sustenance is the participation of the stakeholders and in this case it is residents of the city. For it to thrive, the actions of the dwellers will have to be in sync with the requirements of sustainability i.e. taking care of the environmental concerns, politically acceptable and economically beneficial. I know this balance is hard to achieve but so is the concept of “sustainable cities”.