The Indian impersonating Entrepreneur

I wrote this comment in response to an article in Forbes online about the rising Indian immigrant Entrepreneurs in the US. But as I started writing, it became sort of a very lengthy comment and I thought I will publish it on my blog. Here’s how it goes...

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.

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/

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