Startups will continue to disrupt businesses, say investors

The start-up culture, which has gathered pace in the country, will continue to disrupt traditional business models in a significant way, according to investors which have funded such activity.

Ashneer Grover, the head of finance of online grocery market place Grofers, said,

Traditional businessmen understand business in their own way. That person will discount you in the first place. For a tech guy, that is past. This is the future. This in a way would continue to disrupt traditional business model.

TCM Sundaram, IDG Ventures India The same view was echoed by TCM Sundaram, MD of IDG Ventures, who said that start-ups would disrupt traditional business models in the days to come which has become evident with the likes of cab aggregators and e-commerce firms.

Asked to comment on Future group chairman Kishore Biyani who had recently said that 90 per cent of the start-ups were hopeless and did not have much job creation potential, Anirudh Suri, founding partner of India Internet Fund, said, "In a way, Biyani is right".

In a panel discussion organised by Calcutta Angel Network (CAN), a city-based body of investors which has funded almost eight to ten start-ups, he said

Ninety-nine per cent of the start-ups will not generate jobs. One or two will succeed. But these successful ones will be disruptive in nature

Lack of talent and eco-system in the eastern part of the country were also a cause why the city was way behind places like Bangalore, NCR, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Abhishek Chatterjee, the founder and CEO of Tookitaki, a risk analytics start-ups said,

Two to three years ago, there was no eco-system in Kolkata. That is why we had to move out to Bangalore. I hope the situation is improving now. To add to that, getting the right talent here is also very difficult. The rightly qualified people does not want to stay here or come back, he said.

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The same was the opinion of Kaushal Dugar, founder of tea portal TeaBox.

We started operations from Siliguri. But now shifted to Bangalore due to lack of talent available here, he said.

Although the registered office is still in Siliguri, the research and development centre is in Bangalore, he said. CAN today announced funding to two start-ups, online ticketing platform Explara and a city-based start-up, Vehico, engaged in automobile tracking.