Gopalakrishnan Explains How Startups Can Be India’s Growth Engine
With India discovering its entrepreneurial moorings through the startup route, the youth has surely found newer avenues to realise their potential. However, save for a few well-placed startups, these symbols of new economy are yet to be acquainted with “universal rules of success”. Maybe these early-stage businesses can learn a trick or two from corporate giants.
“Every company has its native way. Similarly, Indian startups need to figure out their own idiosyncratic way of building businesses,” said former Tata executive, R. Gopalakrishnan, also known as Gopal, while speaking at the Mumbai chapter of IBLF.
The author, now a corporate advisor, raised a few fundamental questions facing the startup ecosystem. “What is the hurry to become a unicorn? What is the purpose to have a turnover with losses in the negative direction?”
Stressing on building sustainable, profitable and long-term businesses, he said: “Treat and nurture your startup as a baby. There is no universal rule of success.”
Revealing the ‘Brahma Mantra’, Gopalakrishnan laid out a four-point roadmap for long-term business success: “Entrepreneurs leading startups in today’s times should focus on having a consistent purpose, long-term strategic plan, adaptive approach and financially conservative nature.”
“There is a lot that nature teaches you,” Gopalakrishnan said, while arguing that startups today are expecting “disproportionate growth” in a ridiculously short time. “As a big land, India will continue to birth large-scale, honest and sustainable businesses,” he said.
Addressing the current uncertainty among startups with layoffs and aspiration of higher valuations across sectors, Gopalakrishnan advised founders and entrepreneurs to take strategic decisions ruthlessly and ensure compassionate implementation.
“Today’s startups have exceptionally clever people who haven’t done enough hard thinking and they suffer from lack of patience and excess of ego”.
Gopalakrishnan has authored eight books and co-authored nine more. He is working on four new books. He is fond of history, particularly reading about the “steep rise and often painful, slow decline of empires”.
