‘Failure Is A Comma, Not A Full-stop’

<p><strong>Kavin Bharti Mittal,</strong> son of telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittal, has decided to chart his own entrepreneurial journey. His startup Hike — a messaging platform — has grown 100 per cent year on year, although detractors credit that to help from Airtel. Mittal Jr talks to <em>BW Businessworld</em>’s <em><strong>Suchetana Ray</strong></em> about Hike, the challenges that entrepreneurs face and Over The Top (OTT) players, among other things. Edited excerpts:<br><br><strong>Q. You’re a startup, and India is going through an interesting period in that space. Is this an ideal environment for a startup?</strong><br>Today, more than ever, is the ideal time. There is a market. Infrastructure is getting better. You can see the first wave of Internet startups in India happening. There are a lot of people working on ground-breaking technology here. More importantly, it’s the environment, the mindset. In Silicon Valley, it’s ok to have 10 failures. You really should see failure in a company as a comma, not a full-stop.<br><br><strong>Q. What are the biggest challenges young entrepreneurs in India face today?</strong><br>To sum it up in a sentence, everybody seems to be looking for a quick fix. You’ll go through more downs than ups in your life while building a startup. Don’t build a company to be successful and famous. If you do that you’ll face a quick death. Start a company if you’re inspired by an idea.<br><br><strong>Q. What are the challenges that Hike faces as a ‘Made in India’ brand?</strong><br>One of the biggest challenges we faced was, “Arre yeh toh Made in India hai, yeh kharab hoga.” We’ve had to fight that again and again. Today, we’re the 38th most exciting brand in the country. If people see companies like us growing, providing them with great experiences, then that perception will go away.<br><br><strong>Q. India is a market where most users are on 2G and entry-level smartphones. So how can one enhance the Internet experience for such users?</strong><br>There are cheap smartphones with small real estate that can’t handle too many apps and services, 2G which is worse than dial-up in a market where the tangibility of data is unknown. If you take away all devices from the world, what’s left with the human species is communication. Could we use that to build something very powerful?<br><br><strong>Q. Do you give feedback to your father about data packs available in India and its limitations?</strong><br>I think everybody knows about this. It’s nothing new. Airtel’s been trying to solve it in their own way by launching sachet packs and so on. People keep talking about Airtel, of course, for obvious reasons. However, it’s important to understand we talk to Airtel, Vodafone and Idea all the time. Messaging is driving revenues for telcos today, which is why we must work together and foster a great ecosystem.<br><br><strong>Q. Major telcos in India are demanding regulation of OTT. Don’t you think regulation will violate the spirit of net neutrality in India?</strong><br>The best part of the Internet is that it is not at all regulated, else we cannot come out with an update every 7.5 days. As long as we have that, we are fine. The reason people buy data packs is to consume Internet services offered by OTT players. If we were not there, people would not be buying data. &nbsp;<br><br>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 02-11-2015)</p>