Another connection made – this time with Abid Hussain – gave me a greater insight into the entrepreneurial culture for those that dared to be different in this city. Abid, along with his co-founder – Mohammed Azharuddin - recently secured funding for their revolutionary concept in surface computing. Think iPad. Think bigger. Think retail and public environments. Think something game- changing. I bring you emo2 (
emo2.com). It appears they’ve tapped into the boom in tablet technology and with their investment coming from a number of sources, their off-shore development based in the formidable tech development land of Korea, and their brains firmly staying on Indian shores for now, they’ve a formula certain for success it appears. Abid told me though, that it isn’t always this easy. “In India, the VC’s just don’t get start-ups. They like proven businesses, track records, guaranteed returns. VC’s were designed to take a risk, and in India, the conservatism in investing is still there. Sadly, I’d even say Europe is similar in that regard to risk. The USA still strikes me as the place where they invest with passion on punts because they realise that great products come out of great ideas. Risking is just part of the process for them.”
So, along with Ramki – an Indian entrepreneur who sold out from a tech venture a few years ago and whom is now putting his energies into food with his world radical One Page Cookbooks (www.ramkicooks.
blogspot.com) – and Vijay who heads up Chennai’s recently launched Start-Up centre which provides incubation, mentoring and finance for India’s promising entrepreneurs (
www.thestartupcentre.com) – Chennai provided me with a mix of extraordinary people doing some pretty extraordinary things. The economic insights that India is an agricultural, manufacturing and service industry haven may all be correct but it’s not this that grabbed my attention. There are real thinking, walking, talking entrepreneurs who believe in another way and who defy the conservative convention and the unfortunate limitations that have epitomised this country for years. There are risk-takers developing powerful ideas, starting their own teams and leading their own revolutions. They are playing big like the rest of the world, and I have to applaud that.
Lastly, the more I travel and the more cultures I integrate with, the more I see right in front of my eyes that technology and the internet has flattened the playing fields and evened out the teams playing. Consequently, slowly but surely, powers from unheralded corners of the world are rising. Thomas L. Friedman’s wrote that the world is flat, and here was a startling example of that for me.
For whatever interpretation you choose, I leave you with Chennai: the Detroit of India.
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