EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH AGK – India needs millions of entrepreneurs to sustain its economic growth, opportunities are abundant

February 5, 2024

MulticoreWare CEO, AGK Karunakaran speaks to Indica News and expresses his views on how grassroots initiatives aimed at India’s development can contribute to attaining overall economic prosperity.

The year 2023 was special as I was fortunate to travel the lengths and breadths of India for personal and professional reasons. Majestic views of the Himalayas in Kashmir, Leh, Ladakh in the North, confluence of Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean, and Arabian Sea at Kanyakumari, the Southern tip of the Indian Peninsula, the coastline of Kerala, Tagore’s abode Shantiniketan, favorite Eden Gardens of Kolkata in the East, Sabarmati Ashram, and the large cricket stadium in Ahmedabad in the West were some of the highlights. In addition a lot of road trips in the states of Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu.

A broad understanding from these travels is the fact that India is hungry for growth. Opportunities are abundant and innovative entrepreneurs will help realize these opportunities. Such growth need not come in the large metros or urban areas alone, middle India or rural India is also thriving. Thanks to the rapid development in the transportation infrastructure, be it roads, railways, or airports, mobility across India for tourism, business, and commerce is increasing rapidly.

Once the basic needs (Roti, Kapda aur Makaan) are met Indian families are focused on educating their children and themselves from kindergarten to college through online and in-person learning environments. Non-profit organizations like Pratham, India Literacy Project, and Foundation for Excellence are getting involved at the grassroots level to significantly improve the basic literacy levels. Central and State Governments are investing a lot in establishing colleges and Universities in all parts of India. New IITs are coming up and the leadership and the faculty are thinking out of the box to collaborate with other institutions, industries and individuals who have the experiential wisdom to make an impact to the students and community at large.

As the early generations of Non-Resident Indians consider retirement they could get back to India or connect remotely with any cause of their choice. Some of us from the Palakkad region created a WhatsApp group called “Friends of IIT Palakkad” through which we helped IIT Palakkad in ideating and establishing their incubator TECHIN at IITPKD. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) in India has been creating Section 8 companies with funding over 100 crores to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. They enable students and faculty to create their enterprises around the specific sector funded by DST such as autonomous mobility, sanitation, health care, energy, and railways to name a few.

There are a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities in the education sector in India. While major funding for educating the masses comes from governments there exists private business opportunities to provide affordable learning solutions. CENTA is a company based in Bangalore that provides a continuous learning environment for Teachers. Based on their individual CENTA score each teacher could improve their livelihood as they better job prospects and improve the pay grades in government schools. There are more than a million teachers on this platform and it is growing by the day. CENTA is the first portfolio company of 3ipartners.net which is an investment partnership formed by some of us to make early-stage investments in impact-oriented startups solving problems in the education, livelihood, healthcare, and agriculture sectors of India and is using technology.

India needs millions of entrepreneurs to sustain its economic growth. Organizations like TIE founded in 1992 to foster entrepreneurship has now chapters all over India. These chapters nurture the entrepreneurs with education, mentorship, investment, networking opportunities and incubation. Inter-chapter collaboration is key to sharing best practices and leveraging the relationships across chapters. While TIE is doing its part, the community should embrace the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. Making mistakes, failing fast, and pivoting to adjacency based on customer feedback are the concepts every entrepreneur and their supporters should accept as they build their companies.

Both state and central governments in India are making sincere efforts to enable entrepreneurship through various initiatives.

As mentioned earlier DST funded Section 8 companies provide seed capital for undergraduate, master, and Ph.D. students to validate their ideas and push to different Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). Governments are setting up research parks at IITs, incubators and business accelerators to make it easier for people to start companies. Agriculture-related technologies help farmers to be more efficient and they are now enjoying more crop cycles, better distribution networks, and better modes of transporting their products. Women entrepreneurs can start businesses while managing a healthier work-life balance. Government and large corporations have enabled better connectivity and a state-of-the-art payment infrastructure. Getting paid is reasonably easy using the UPI platform.

Here is an example of an entrepreneur who started a company called Torch-IT. The initial product is a smart cane that allows a blind person to better navigate as they go about their activities. As he met with his customers and people with other disabilities he pivoted to making multiple storefronts and an e-commerce website that sells not only his product but also other products from India and around the world to help the special needs person at affordable prices.

Meeting such entrepreneurs gives me hope that many such businesses will grow along with India. So let us take a moment to think about what all of us can do in enabling India’s growth.

Here are some of my thoughts:

• Give time, money or both time and money to not-for-profit causes that resonate with you
• Connect with your alma mater be it your school, college, or university, and visit to explore how you can make a difference
• Explore becoming an investor in the Indian startup ecosystem through a venture capital platform or directly
• Visit India often to experience the pace of development
• Be an expert advisor to startups, entrepreneurs or institutions

As we ring in 2024, pls reflect and post your thoughts on how you are engaging or plan to engage through grassroots efforts toward the development of India as our motherland scales to achieve economic prosperity every day.