There is a lot of excitement and enthusiasm amongst the youth for working towards a start-up. We are about to witness an era of start-ups not only in this country but globally. In a country with a billion plus population there are plenty of challenges on which MBAs could work on to come up with sustainable solutions. Most of the investors are looking at execution capability of the team which comes up with an idea of a start-up. Let us go through the ABC of start-ups which the young MBAs could work on;

• Accessibility The Achilles’ heel for any business is Distribution. In a country which has more than 60% of population depending on agriculture, there is a dire need to come up with solutions in the space of agriculture supply chain, distributing FMCG products and others to rural India. The aim of start-ups of this kind should be to Reach the Unreachable.
• Banking Credit has the power of transforming lives of people. There are countries in Asian continent that have come up with wonderful solutions like the Grameen Bank which changed the landscape of banking by providing capital to individuals or self-help groups which were traditionally denied capital by the leading/nationalised banks. This sector has tremendous opportunities for start-ups, closely followed by Insurance.
• Digital India Digitisation brings enormous opportunities to work on real life problems like city traffic, crowd management, identity verification etc. There are many companies betting big dollars on businesses this segment. Many Ivey League Universities too are working on such solutions. This is just the tip of iceberg as many solutions are even related to on-demand video streaming. Imagine if you have access to internet and internet enabled TV why should you pay for the pack of 300 channels when you are at the max going to view 3 or 5 channels in a day or a month. If one creates a solution where real time serials, matches and news get streamed on the internet then you may not need a set-top box at all.
• Environment friendly The world is moving towards sustainability and go-green is the theme of most companies and individuals. There is plethora of opportunities in this space right from e-waste to carbon credit based lending. There are many Venture Capitalists that have developed an expertise in funding such start-ups.
• Financial Inclusion In emerging markets the biggest challenge for financial inclusion is establishing legal identity of an individual for which a truck-load of paperwork needs done. There are numerous examples in this sector of start-ups like CodaPay which has been successful by focusing on financial inclusion without getting bogged down by KYC norms laid down by regulators. This sector has great unexplored opportunities for start-ups.
• Housing Countries across the globe have similar challenges with the only difference in degree of difficulty. One such start-up which I would like to mention is EthisCrowd. They have touched the core need of every human being i.e. A start-up based on principle of Islamic banking focussing on affordable housing through crowd funding. Such start-up themes don’t face challenges of geographical boundaries as they address the very basic need of every human being (i.e. BUYING A HOME)and would be acceptable in all markets (of course subject to the law of land).
• Healthcare Massive urbanisation and the new age lifestyle has made healthcare a hot favourite of Venture Capitals and Angel Investors. Whether its iWatch or Fitbit or a wearable like Practo, there is lot of activity happening in this space and aspiring Entrepreneurs should look forward to entering this space.
• Insurance Indian scriptures talk about insurance right from the time of Manusmriti. There are many start-ups in this field however one worth mentioning is Foundershield. It is a start-up setup to give safety net to new ventures. Very innovative idea at the same time practical too.
• Justice On one side technology is giving sleepless nights to many governments in the world and on the other end we have tech start-ups for women safety like Safetypin or CitizenCop for crime reporting are few out of the box solutions. There are regulatory challenges but in a country of a billion this type of solution would transform people’s life.

An advice that I would like to share with the young MBAs

• Never loose the focus on Customer centricity This is the most important aspect when it comes to creating a solution. Almost 80% of start-ups fail to recognise what the customers want and try to give them something that they don’t need. This is the problem with even established companies and businesses today. If solutions are created using Design Thinking then this gap can be eliminated. For an MBA there are many opportunities which can be explored to pursue your entrepreneurial dream. All you need to remember and introspect as to what will be the impact of this idea or concept on society at large. The larger the impact, the higher is the chance of your entrepreneurial dream becoming a success