Taking the Lead

India has the most number of companies (18) on Forbes Asia's 100 to Watch list. However, the startup ecosystem is still a work in progress

- BY NAINI THAKER

India’s startup ecosystem is barely two decades old. Unlike the US, where tech startups were dreaming big from the 1960s, or China, which saw a meteoric rise backed by state support and rising incomes, India’s entrepreneurs have had to build not just products, but also the infrastructure around them.

“Amazon could rely on FedEx. Flipkart had to build that infrastructure from scratch. It is 10 times harder here because we are often creating both the product and the ecosystem it needs to survive,” says Kunal Khattar, founder of AdvantEdge VC.

What sets India apart is not just the scale of its market but also the specificity of its problems. Rapido, for instance, was founded in 2015 to make daily commute affordable and accessible, especially in smaller cities where ride sharing was expensive and limited. Its mission, as co-founder Pavan Guntupalli puts it, was to “unlock large-scale employment” by enabling anyone with a bike and time to earn a livelihood.

Similarly, PhonePe was launched in 2015 when digital payments were still unfamiliar territory. While the startup ecosystem was buzzing with ecommerce pioneers and wallet experiments, PhonePe was asking a billion people to fundamentally rethink their relationship with money— an audacious bet that paid off.