MyTake

In the month of January, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi launched Startup India Action Plan to encourage entrepreneurship and to facilitate startups. This Action Plan consists of detailed scheme of things and addresses the issues relating to obstacles which generally entrepreneurs have been facing. The bureaucratic hassles, problems in raising finances, and availability of networks to reach out to the customers have affected the conversion of idea into reality for many new starters. The fight between big and small, old and new has also been one of the deterrent to start a new venture.  Ever since the NDA Government took the office they have been pushing the industry and inviting foreign investments to boost economic growth. It has also created a positive market perception and corporates have welcomed the initiatives, though the hassles like passing of GST Bill by the parliament has posed political challenge and discouraged industry as a whole. It was around six ...

India lives in its villages. And India’s most important characteristic on which its strength rests is ‘unity in diversity’.  We have grown with this fact.  The belief that people residing in urban areas are better off than their counterparts toiling in the villages is highly relative.  It really depends as to what really one wants to look at, in tangible form or intangible form. Whatever the case be, it is evident from the practices that the back end support to industrial power houses is provided by this strong rural working population, working hard through their lives. The thinking that standard of living in the villages in tangible terms is poor or relatively bad, is obscure.  It has given birth to an idea of focusing on developing better infrastructure in the rural areas.  It is also necessitated out of issues related to migration (from rural areas to urban areas), which is posing a great challenge to the urban development departments of the respective go...

Recently Vijay Govindrajan, Professor of strategy at Dartmouth College, USA was asked – ‘ While Innovating, whom should companies target – local consumers or global ones? ’ His reply was:   ‘The focus has to be Indian consumers, especially Indian non-consumers.’   He divided India into three categories, namely   ‘Developed India’   (100 million people living in 15 major Indian cities), ‘ Developing India ’ (300 million people living in 6,000 small towns), and   ‘Underdeveloped India’   (700 million living in the 600,000 villages). He combined developing and underdeveloped India into one group of customers as non-consumers. The needs of these non-consumers have to be addressed in order to capitalize on the opportunity that India provides and it is possible through developing innovative products and services which cater to their pockets. These non-consumers pose a greater challenge for the corporate houses to attract their attention. Mo...