The past few month have see a lot of frenzy in the entrepreneurial circles in India, with some people claiming that India is at that stage where the Bay Area was 10 years ago. Every other day I hear of friends and batchmates starting off on a venture of their own. So it’s interesting to dwell on what really is bringing about this paradigm shift from being a traditional service class society into a business class society, that too at a time when jobs are available aplenty and multi national organizations are making a beeline for opening up offices in India.

Let me start by listing the factors which according to me are bringing about this new revolution:

1. Vinod Khosla, Sabeer Bhatia, Narayana Murthy, Shiv Nadar:  The new age entrepreneur growing up in those years when the Internet was just beginning to make it’s mark, the mid-nineties, would often hear about the success stories of these individuals. There were many more, but what was interesting was that almost all of them excelled in the sphere of Computer Science. This brought about the craze in the Indian student to major in Computer Science. So even though they went ahead and majored in this field, the success stories of people who made their mark in software and information technology left a lasting impression on their aspirations.
2. Family Ties and a strong family backing: Right after attaining independence, the Indian economy was in resurrection mode. The government was the only source of jobs, it was a fight for survival since a lot of the families has borne the brunt of partition and losing all their assets to that. However in the 50 years after independence things changed. The late 1990s’ and early 2000s’ gave the new age entrepreneur the added family financial support, to give them the freedom to take risks without worrying about where their next meal would come from, something which their fathers could not afford to do.
3. Global Experience and Improved Standards of Education: After the economic liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991, FDI inflow increased. The Indian professional was no longer a frog stuck in a well. The horizons expand and with it came the experience and learning’s on the working style of global organizations. The outsourcing boom allowed homegrown consulting companies like Infosys and TCS to get into implementation and send it’s people abroad. The global outlook also led to meticulous execution. Indians’ who had spent some years working for organizations abroad started realizing the growth in opportunities in India and returning to India. This was in stark contrast to the 1980s’ when once someone left India to go abroad, he vowed not to return for many many years.
4.  The birth of ideation centers: Like the silicon valley in the US, the one place where global business were discussed and conceived was the breeding ground of ideas. The emergence of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon established the very same breeding grounds for India. Even thought the cities still do not exactly match up, there is improvement being made to the ecosystem, so as to provide better access to critical support services, VC’s, Angel Investors, legal firms and placement agencies. The ingredients were being put into place to create a sumptuous environment where entrepreneurs could thrive.
5. Improved infrastructure and Increased purchasing power:  From being a country with poor roads, water shortage, poor public transport, we progressed to building a golden quadrilateral, state of the art metro rail (ofcourse I am talking about Delhi, but its a start), modernization of cities, better housing infrastructures, supreme telecom and datacom access and a comparable (or even better) lifestyle to what you would get abroad. Advancement of industry meant better purchasing parity, people were willing to invest in products, try different products, give new products a chance. The market was ripe, opportunities aplenty.
6. Better networking and exchange: Experience is an entrepreneurs best teacher. More often then not, learning from the experiences of other entrepreneurs is a gold mine. Indian who have succeeded in Silicon Valley owe their success to the support the TiE members have provided to young entrepreneurs. Similarly TiE has started to become active in India aswell. TiECon 2006 held last month in New Delhi, was the most well attended conference of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and media personalities of India. With mentoring clinics which were held as a part of the conference, the thrust was provided to new age entrepreneurs to build their business offering.

The above factors are those which led to the tipping point, the Indian entrepreneur has just started to emerge. What we really need is a big success story on the lines of a Google, an Amazon or an E-bay to keep the thrust going. So what is your prediction of the next big success story to emerge from the current entrepreneurial wave going on. I know what’s my prediction. It is this.