Start-ups as disrupters of society: an Australian Indian perspective
Deepthi Ravula, CEO WE HUB, Government of Telangana
What is the stereotypical image of a startup founder?
A few years ago, you may have thought they would be a young 20-something, highly educated from a STEM field, living in a major city, and in all probability male. Their start-up would be based on a new software product, and their employees would be just like them – all similar in age and education.
While you hold on to that thought, let me share a little anecdote:
A couple of months ago, we had a visitor at WE Hub, India’s first and only state led physical incubator for Women Entrepreneurs at 6:00 AM. Let’s call her Sita. She had taken an overnight train and had come straight to our office from the station. Armed with a few samples of the products she had made; she was ready to make her pitch to us. When our team walked into the office, Sita recognized every member of the team based on the Entrepreneur training videos we had made. She spoke the startup language and was armed with an entire gamut of knowledge she had gained despite living more than seven hours away from the main capital city. While we were wide eyed and humbly impressed, Sita asked us quite emphatically to “Guide me in becoming a job creator and support my community”
And that is what start-up founders really are – people with passion to scale up their ideas and become Job Creators. And they are diverse.
Start-up founders are no longer defined by any preconceptions about gender, age, location or whatever else. Start-ups today are inclusive, bridging the gaps which exist across gender and education. Melanie Perkins of Canva, Falguni Nayar of Nyka, and Sarah Blakely of Spanx are all trailblazers and self-made billionaires who are shattering glass ceilings when it comes to leadership. These women entrepreneurs are inspiring millions of young girls across the world to not just pursue education but become the best in STEM fields.
The economic benefits of start-ups are for all to see, but one of the biggest disruptions that start-ups are creating across the world is in helping to bridge the gender gap. There is a long way to go, but both India and Australia are well on their way to better enabling girls and young women to not only dream big but do big!
Over the past few decades, many governments across the world have begun focusing on fostering innovation and entrepreneurship as key resources of prosperity, productivity and, importantly, as a way of propelling economic growth. Start-ups are becoming engines which drive higher incomes, strong geopolitical presence, and create jobs of the future.
This is mainly because the way corporations do business has changed. The decade between 2002 and 2012 saw as many as half the global corporations in the Fortune 100 drop out of the list. Many corporations have disappeared, downsized, pivoted or merged into something totally different. For example, previous giants like Kodak, Nokia, and Palm of PalmPilot fame, were pioneers in their respective f ields but were quickly overtaken by innovative companies and start-ups.
The second key role of start-ups in economies is to spur innovation and create results for an ever-changing world. According to the Kauffman Foundation, between 2000-2010 Industrial Era companies in the US dismissed or downgraded more jobs than they created. Companies such as Google, Facebook (now Meta) among others are credited with having created more than 4.6 million new jobs both directly and indirectly during the same time.
The third role that start-ups play in disrupting economies is through job creation in blue sky areas we only have read in research paper. Historically, education systems have focused on preparing people for specific professional careers, such as doctors, engineers, lawyers, and accountants. While these professions are pillars of society, the result is that economies become more a consumer economy rather than producer economy.
As the crucial role of entrepreneurs in generating growth and jobs becomes clearer, nations are re-aligning education to foster a culture of entrepreneurship. This is enabling a lot of local innovators and entrepreneurs to work on solving the local challenges. Enabling environments like incubators and accelerators are facilitating start-up entrepreneurs to work closely with technological innovators in order to improve the welfare of the community around them and provide solutions.
By collaborating with governments, scalable startups can foster technological developments and become strategic partners of larger corporations. Start-ups can even increase people’s welfare by providing solutions to environmental issues.
The fourth role of start-ups and innovators is to enrich and empower the communities around them. During the past two years when much of the world was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on people movement led workspaces to shift into technology-enabled virtual worlds. But a new way of working soon emerged where many start-up founders moved to the smaller towns and cities to set up their secondary base. They increasingly hired teams remotely, which enabled talent from regional areas to be part of the innovation ecosystem from which they were previously excluded.
Start-up founders became the front runners of this movement both in India and Australia, which democratised entrepreneurship and reduced economic and geographic inequalities. This also spurred economic activity in rural and regional areas due to increased local spending as the better quality of life and affordability on offer attracted workers, trickling down the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. These businesses are now reshaping entire industries, forcing traditional players to re-think their strategies.
The fifth and most important role start-ups play is in democratising entrepreneurship and creating inclusive employment opportunities. Governments have a huge role to play in supporting the growth of start-ups which bring more jobs, revenues, and foreign direct investment into countries. Innovators and entrepreneurs need to be fostered by the creation of more innovation and start-up hubs, and better access to Government funding to enable, encourage and scale start-ups so that they can deliver and sustain the jobs of tomorrow.
In March 2022, Australia announced a series of new collaborative investments with India paving the way for creating a plethora of opportunities. These include the India-Australia Innovation and Technology Challenge, the India-Australia Critical Minerals Research Partnership, and the India Australia Green Steel Partnership to collaborate on research production and commercialisation of clean technologies, critical minerals and energy.
The agreements also include funding to expand the Australian Space Agency’s cooperation with India.
By committing to the continued collaboration between entrepreneurs of both nations, developing innovative products and promoting start-ups and incubation centres, both Australia and India are committed to enhancing cooperation in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. Because TOGETHER is the best way to go forward and grow.
Deepthi Ravula is the CEO of WE HUB (Women Entrepreneurs HUB), A Government of Telangana initiative for promoting and fostering Women Entrepreneurship in Telangana and across India. An Electronics Engineer by education, she has 15 years of experience working in USA with Palm, Nokia, Atheros, Qualcomm, LitePoint, Teradyne among others. She has been appointed as CEO of WE Hub since inception in 2017. Under her leadership, WE HUB has scaled to become India’s first and only state-led physical incubator for Women Entrepreneurs and has been working towards democratizing entrepreneurship across Urban/Rural/Tribal regions of Telangana & India. WE HUB is working towards enabling other states in India and academic institutions across the world to create support mechanisms for women entrepreneurs based on the learnings over the past four years.