The Start Up Revolution

GROWTH PROSPECTS

An ambitious initiative called “10,000 Startups”, aiming to scale up the startup ecosystem in India by 10x. The program is supported by Microsoft, Google, Intel, Verisign, and Kotak. 10,000 Startups aims to enable incubation, funding and support for 10,000 startups in India over the next ten years. The program has been able to successfully impact 150+ technology startups, aiding in the raising of funds, acceptance into acceleration programs, found customers, and on-boarded members through the initiative.

INVESTMENT PLANS

The Union Budget has helped in promoting the start-up culture with Rs. 1,000 crore being allotted by the government to assist new businesses and technology and another Rs. 2,150 crore for the government’s ‘Digital India’ programme. According to the research firm PrivCo, venture capital funding of Indian startups touched almost $ 4 billion in 2014, which is a phenomenal 261 per cent hike from 2013.

EXISTING START UPS

A first-of-its kind report on the Indian startup ecosystem by Nasscom titled ‘Tech-startup in India: A Bright Future’ highlights key trends and forecasts that a fusion of mobile, analytics, internet of things, and software-as-a service will leapfrog opportunities for the Indian startup ecosystem. The number of companies in the top sectors include 350 in Big Data and Analytics, 800 in Cloud Computing, 30 in Hardware, 35 in security, 50 in payments, 190 in Ed-Tech, 100 in Adtech, 30 in Health-tech, 100 in gaming, 30 in Augmented Reality, to name a few.

Founder Anirudh Motwani talks about his startup, India College Search, which is an education portal whose award-winning algorithm sorts colleges on a variety of quantitative and qualitative factors to provide a student with the most relevant results

Can you give us a brief idea of how India College Search works?

India College Search (re branded College Search.in from Oct 1) provides in depth information including faculty, placement, facilities, fees and alumni reviews that allow a student choose from among thousands of options open to them. We also aim to improve the application process by allowing students to apply directly to the college. Currently, 3000+colleges and universities accept online applications via India College Search.

What is the most popular course that gets searched on the site and has there been a significant change in popular course options in the past 5 years or so?

Since we started with engineering back in 2010, it continues to be the most popular course on our site and otherwise, with over 5 lakh students enrolling for the course every year. Certain changes have taken place over the past years, with professional courses like MBBS & BBA gaining in popularity at the undergraduate level while degree courses such as BA & BSc reducing in percentage terms although they still account for greater admissions in absolute terms.
The research in job market has also meant a polarization post-grad courses, especially for MBA, where the lack of quality institutes has meant that admissions are dropping despite a high interest.

How do you ensure that India College Search stands out amongst all the already existing ventures in the industry?

By ensuring we do not work on a classifieds model with colleges, we have been able to create the largest college and university ecosystem. Over 6000 institutes India College Search (more than 10X of any other platform). In terms of quality too, we are the only ones to work with the best institutes in each field including NIFT for fashion, School of Planning & Architecture for architecture, NALSAR for law, NITs for engineering, Jesus & Mary College (JMC), Ferguson & Loyola for degree courses and XLRI, Narsee Monjee & MDI for management.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs out there who wish to begin their own start ups?

Create a product or service to solve a problem rather than trying to find problems that can be solved by the business you want to create; ii)Try to focus on problems which you have faced personally since this will put you in a unique position to solve it and make decision making instinctive