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India ranks third in the global startup ecosystem in the world incubating more than 50,000 startups and witnessing 15% YoY growth per year. Being a center of innovation and skilled labor, Indian startups have attracted investments from all over the world. This paper aims at exploring the trends that are driving the growth in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Top 200 startups according to valuation are selected as a sample to find out the major trends in the Indian startup ecosystem. This paper includes surveying the sample startups about the implementation of trends such as big data, crowdfunding and shared economy in their startup and its tangible, as well as intangible impacts on their business. The result of the survey is analyzed to get an overview of the emerging trends in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Major ten emerging trends that drive growth in the Indian startup ecosystem are discovered and the areas where these trends can be leveraged are identified.

This research has contributed toward structuring and documenting the growth driving trends, and it will help the budding entrepreneurs to get familiar with the contemporary trends, pros and cons associated with it and the ways to leverage these trends to build a successful startup.

The purpose of this study offers a theoretical model, hypotheses and empirical analyses of how formal and informal institutions influence the ease of market entry of startups in the context of India.

A theoretical model based upon institutional and market entry theories is presented with hypotheses. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypotheses.

Results of the study suggest that college preparations and a culture of creativity and innovation are positively related to ease of market entry by Indian startups. A culture of personal success is negatively related to ease of market entry. Government assistance related to ease of market entry is not significant.

This paper offers a new perspective, linking formal and informal institutional influences to startup ease of market entry. In addition, informal institutions are viewed from the cultures of personal success and creativity/innovation within the entrepreneurial domain, which is also new to the literature. This paper offers specific insights in the context of India startups and offers some interesting findings that can contribution to the literature, policy and practice.

Indian Railways (IR) has been slow in innovation. The competition from other modes of transport has posed new challenges to IR. Railways worldwide have taken help from startups to develop innovative solutions to improve railway operations. Such collaborations have helped in leveraging the technical expertise of startups in domains which are non-conventional for railways to develop in-house. These collaborations have been made possible by funding startups through various investment channels.

This paper aims to examine the factors that lead to the failure of startups in India and proposes a ‘Four Dimensional (4D) Strategic Framework’ to drive success.

This study is exploratory and uses a narrative analysis methodology to analyse the accounts of key startup stakeholders – founders, investors, former employees and consumers; to identify their failure factors. A conveniently selected sample of 165 startups was studied to understand better the reasons for their failure within a thematic framework developed from David Feinleib’s (2012) handbook “Why Startups Fail”.

Results indicate that a dearth of capital or running out of money and inadequate sales and marketing strategy, which leads businesses to fall behind rivals and lose money on each transaction, are the most common factors for startup failure in India.

“Startups” are substantial for emerging economies like India because they fuel technological innovation and economic progress and provide for the modern workforce’s needs and aspirations. However, they seem to be typically unprofitable, with a modest probability of survival. Subsisting studies mainly focus primarily on success factors and very few on why startups fail, with significant disagreement on an appropriate methodology. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses failure factors of Indian startups using narrative analysis of its key stakeholders. It aims to aid the conception of profitable entrepreneurship by reducing the failure frequency in the startup and small business ecology.

The purpose of this paper is to use Twitter analytics for analyzing the startup ecosystem of India.

The paper uses descriptive analysis and content analytics techniques of social media analytics to examine 53,115 tweets from 15 Indian startups across different industries. The study also employs techniques such as Naïve Bayes Algorithm for sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm for topic modeling of Twitter feeds to generate insights for the startup ecosystem in India.

The Indian startup ecosystem is inclined toward digital technologies, concerned with people, planet and profit, with resource availability and information as the key to success. The study categorizes the emotions of tweets as positive, neutral and negative. It was found that the Indian startup ecosystem has more positive sentiments than negative sentiments. Topic modeling enables the categorization of the identified keywords into clusters. Also, the study concludes on the note that the future of the Indian startup ecosystem is Digital India.

The analysis provides a methodology that future researchers can use to extract relevant information from Twitter to investigate any issue.

Any attempt to analyze the startup ecosystem of India through social media analysis is limited. This research aims to bridge such a gap and tries to analyze the startup ecosystem of India from the lens of social media platforms like Twitter.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence the success of entrepreneurial ventures started by members of the Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley.

It is based on survey data collected from Indian-born high-tech entrepreneurs living in Silicon Valley, and uses Bayesian estimation to test hypotheses aimed at understanding entrepreneurial growth. Specifically, the paper examines the linkages between prior startup experience, participation in diasporic networks, and new venture growth.

It finds that entrepreneurs with prior startup experience displayed more active participation in diasporic networks, and were more likely to have co-founders. Active network participation over a length of time was positively related to new venture growth. The findings contribute toward the understanding of the value of startup experience in leveraging social networks, and the relationship between diasporic network participation and entrepreneurship.

As a cross-sectional study with a single data source, it is subject to concerns about causality and common method variance.

The results highlight the value of serial entrepreneurship and the potential benefits to immigrant entrepreneurs of participating in diasporic social networks, especially those with a global reach. They also suggest that investors would be better off investing in entrepreneurs who have greater startup experience and participate actively in diasporic networks.

The paper is based on a very unique sample of Indian-born immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs based in the Silicon Valley. It provides a deeper understanding of the role of diasporic social networks, and their relationship with prior startup experience and entrepreneurial success within that context.

Using a novel monthly data set, this study aims to examine the factors affecting the funding of Indian start-ups.

Given the panel structure of the data, the fixed effects regression technique has been used.

The findings reveal that years of operation is a key factor. Amongst others, angel investors and equity financing are the key drivers of startup financing. Government policy does not appear to have gained adequate traction, although the improvement in the business reform action by state governments has begun to exert a salutary effect.

From a policy standpoint, the study provides insights into what policies and practices can be exploited to streamline the funding bottlenecks affecting startups in the Indian context.

Notwithstanding being a country with a significant presence in the startup space, there are admittedly limited studies, which examine this issue for India. Viewed from this standpoint to the best of the knowledge, the analysis is one of the early studies to shed light on the factors driving the funding of startups in the Indian context.

The case will help learners to analyse how effective handling of an extended marketing mix of 7Ps (product, price, place, promotion, physical evidence, participants and processes) makes a startup profitable in its initial years of inception; understand the significance of the online marketing strategies like digital marketing and social media marketing implemented by firms to attain a competitive edge amongst established local and global competitors; examine the strategic challenges faced by a business enterprise while entering an emerging market; analyse the growth strategies of a startup relative to various market constraints; and propose long-term strategies for sustainable growth for a startup operating in the wearables market.

Founded in 2016, Boat Lifestyle is a Delhi-based Indian startup in fashionable consumer electronics. In the past five years, Boat earned remarkable profits and emerged as one of the most promising startups through its innovative products offerings and promotion. Aiming at its target customer segment, the millennials, it promoted its products through social media marketing such as influencer marketing and brand tie-ins with sports teams and music events. The case focuses on the dynamics of the Indian wearables market that is facing tough competition from global and local players. To ensure continued growth prospects, while maintaining a tight focus on product differentiation, quality, and customer satisfaction, there is a greater need for Boat to rethink its market development and growth strategies regarding new innovations and adopting long-term orientation like diversification and global expansion.

The case aims for teaching business management students at the Undergraduate, Postgraduate, and Executive education level. In addition, the case can be related to the Strategic Management course curriculum and Marketing course curriculum.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

This paper aims to study is to empirically investigate the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EOR), entrepreneurial bricolage (EBR), technology orientation (TOR), sustainability orientation (SOR) and Trust (TUR) in the sustainable enterprise performance (SEP) of tech startups in India. It uses a framework grounded in the EBR theory, upper echelon theory and resource-based view theory.

A primary survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire amongst 285 sample respondents from 425 tech startups and the data were analyzed using the partial least squares-structural equation modeling technique.

The findings suggest that EOR and TOR significantly influence SEP. SOR and TUR do not significantly affect the SEP. EBR plays a significant mediating role between TOR and EOR and SEP in the context of Indian technology-based startups.

This cross-sectional study has a geographic limitation as it was conducted in Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune and their suburbs. As this study was carried out in the context of tech startups in a developing country such as India, caution needs to be exercised while generalizing the findings of this study to other regions, countries and cultural contexts.

This study highlights the significance of TOR and EOR in the long-term SEP to the budding entrepreneurs who have strong EOR and deploy EBR strategy to start their new business ventures. It also infers that few of the reasons for the failure of tech startups are because of the lack of attention to TUR and SOR.

This study has a novel contribution as it empirically validates the role of multiple constructs such as EOR, TOR, TUR, SOR and EBR toward SEP in a resource-constrained startup environment in the context of a developing country such as India.

This paper aims to explore the evolving needs of Indian men and their aspirations regarding work–life balance practices. The ultimate aim is to assess whether the available policies are helpful and to explore the various roadblocks in their implementation.

This study takes a qualitative approach and draws on the semi-structured interviews of Indian men (N = 19).

The analysis revealed an asymmetrical approach of organizations toward implementing employee benefit policies. The organizations remain plagued by the notion that “benefits policies” are needed only by women to carry out additional family responsibilities, whereas men remain aloof from such responsibilities, which takes its strength from the patriarchal roots of Indian society. This study reveals two major themes: lack of appreciation for gender egalitarianism arising among men at the work–family interface’ and the coping practices by men to address their ‘role strain arising due to work–family conflict. It is noted that there is a need to formulate policies and practices to cater to men’s evolving aspirations toward the family–work interface.

This study furthers the debate on inclusive policies for employees and examines the subsection of men for their evolving needs and aspirations. Although organizations live in the glory of having employee-friendly policies, they offer little help in advancing gender neutrality in the workplace. The inclusive policies shall also be helpful for females because it would increase the availability of their partners/spouses to share the family responsibilities.