When I was still doing my engineering and had seriously started thinking about my own venture, I remember having a discussion with a good friend of mine when she made a remark “Why do you techies always think about doing something of your own? After all, there are already so many companies and why can’t you be happy working for one?” I didn’t have a very good response to the question that time though I did manage to fumble a few words trying to answer it (I like to believe that I was fairly successsful at that).

Last few days, more than a few events has happened reminding me of the same question and I have had a few discussions on the same with my friends. I would like to share my thoughts on that here. And it is not just confined to techies but, in general, Indian youth.

The bold prediction that I am going to make is that there is an attitude shift of the Indian youth in moving from a ’secure and well paying job’ towards entrepreneurship and ‘risky jobs’. And I am going to present my case with reasons that are outlined below:

• Dot-com boom and the worry of being left behind in the race: In India, the dot-com boom lasted all for total 3 months but the best thing they did to the Indian youth is that it showed that becoming an entrepreneur is not that difficult as it used to be. If one has a good idea and has the courage to go through some potential bad times, a business can be created. And if you don’t do that, somebody else will. Of course, nobody wants to be left behind in the race.
• More private sector companies: In the last decade, we have all seen a plenty of companies coming in the private sector industries. These companies, by virtue of giving proper attention to the talent and hard-work, has made people very competitive and consequentially taught us to take risks and do better.
• Failure is no longer a taboo: Or at least failures are more accepted in our Indian society now. Earlier people used to be scared of failures not just because it hurts them economically but more so because of the wide social impact that it used to have (with people equating failures directly with the capabilities). We, the Indians, have become more tolerant to failures now and that has eased up the social pressure and the feeling of “What will others think if I fail in the business”. People understand that if a startup doesn’t do well, more than often, it doesn’t speak low about the capabilities of the people involved. There are so many other factors involved and we have learnt to acknowledge that.
• Increased working population of the fairer sex: I have been debating on how big an impact does this have and am very convinced (based on my thoughts and discussions with friends) that this factor has a major impact on the risk taking capabilities of everybody. The feeling that there can be at least 1 partner (in case of couples) who is in a ‘less riskier’ job helps the other person to take higher risks. And that partner can be anybody - males or females.
• Easier to create businesses: We couldn’t have seen this shift in attitude if creating businesses was as difficult as it used to be. The conventional wisdom was that you need a lot of capital in order to create a business. Becausr of more and more Venture Capitalists and Investors willing to help the businesses, this step has become much easier now. If there is a good idea and people see potential in it, there are very high chances that there will be investors willing to spend money and making sure that the business takes off. Of course, outsourcing has made it a lot easier too (deeper thoughts on that some other time)
• Plenty of jobs for those who deserve: My post can’t be complete if I don’t mention the fact that entrepreneurship and risk-taking capability is fueled by the fact that India is a growing economy and there are plenty of jobs for the deserving. It’s only the guys with a great confidence on themselves who take the entrepreneurship route or stick to the startups because they know that if things go wrong, they can always go and join another ’stable job’. This ‘fall-back plan’ always comforts on a rainy day.

And I think this is just the beginning of this attitude shift. With time, this feeling will only become stronger and I believe that it’s the big companies who will start having more trouble finding the ‘better talent’. More and more people will want to either start a company or join good startups like Tekriti. Ah - what a day will that be!

It’s just a natural shift when initially it was the government jobs that were the most preferred ones, followed by private sector but big company jobs some time later that became popular because of the way they recognized talent and gave rewards. Joining or having a startup is just a logical next step to that. We, at Tekriti, are in right position to push that movement and I am sure that we will be successful. After all, it is difficult to fail with a team as good as ours.