Very
informative and incisive but I am not too surprised at the findings. I think
one of the greatest traits that Indians have is their ability to adapt
and this is what makes them successful in any environment or country, let alone
the US.
So while the
number of successful entrepreneurial Indian immigrants is on the rise in the US,
the only problem I think is that a very small fractional number of these entrepreneurs
end up starting new enterprises that are actually innovative and bring new
concepts, ideas, services and products that are completely out-of-the-box and
revolutionary.
A lot of
Indians I know that run corporations in the US are all very run of the mill ‘consulting’
shops or businesses and are able to capitalize (read exploit) on the whole
off-shoring and outsourcing bandwagon. Because of their Indian roots,
upbringing and business knowhow, they are able to start and successfully run US
based corporations depending completely on India based back office staff and services
model.
And now we have a new breed of India based entrepreneurs who are riding the e-commerce wave in India by starting a plethora of websites selling everything under the sun and practically replicating (read copying) models and businesses which have been prevalent and evolved in the US for over a decade now. You have a Flipkart.com based on Amazon.com or a Bestylish.com based on the hugely successful Zappos.com started by Tony Hsieh who also happens to be an Immigrant but from Taiwan.
What is interesting
however is that none of these new Indian websites or online businesses are sued by their
American corporation counterparts from whom they are blatantly replicated. It appears
to be some sort of a carefully planned conspiracy by the American giants to let
them be so as to ‘test the Indian waters’ and if successful eventually acquire
them for millions of dollars.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/10/15/how-indians-defied-gravity-and-achieved-success-in-silicon-valley/
#Impersonation #Impersonating #ImpersonatingEntrepreneur #ForbesArticles #ForbesMagazine
So the point
I am trying to make here is that while we have a lot of Indians starting new tech
companies in the US (or in India), it will be rare or near impossible to see an
Indian immigrant to start something like Zappos.com in the US.
But then
again, I recently read an online article in Business Insider featuring the sexiest start-up entrepreneurs in the US
under 30 and it surprisingly had an Indian (Arshad Chowdhury who started Cleargears)
included in the list. That felt really good and I think there’s still some hope.
And by the
way, I am happy to be back on my Blog after a long unintended haitus (read Bloggers Block).
In closing, here’s a link to that Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/10/15/how-indians-defied-gravity-and-achieved-success-in-silicon-valley/
