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"The tipping point has arrived for India product companies"

Starting with a comparison of Huwaei and Infosys, successful Entrepreneur-turned-Angel investor Venkat Rajendran, has a post (which I noticed only now) on why he thinks why this holy-grail-moment-of-the-Indian-techie has (finally) arrived.

* It is a wide open space: There is no dearth of opportunities. The ground is empty. Telecom, Consumer Electronics, White Goods, Industrial systems, Capital Equipment, Non-conventional Energy, Software systems and tools, Food processing, Financial systems, Instrumentation, Automobiles… the list is endless for building strong branded goods from India and selling to the world.

* Large home market: One of the problems till recently for an Indian product company was a small home market. With a swelling middle class with increasing disposable income, a huge captive home market gives a big advantage for a new product venture. For example, Indian telecom market is the fastest growing major market in the world today. Indian cellular subscriber base grew by 98% between 2005 and 2006. For the same period, the broadband connections grew by 133%. And there is hardly any Indian Telecom product company larger than $ 100 Million in revenue. There is easily space for four or five with Billion $ plus revenue.

...Take Indian Defense – a lot of technology deployments are happening. Indian consumer markets is very promising and just taking off. I believe there are a lot of opportunities. 300 Million Middle class is finally emerging. The needs are just too many. I used to hear 25 years back that is very difficult to conceive and build products sitting in India, because the real market is in the west. But now the story is different. The biggest growth is happening in the emerging markets and we live in these markets. We have a big home advantage now. Start with the home market and take on the world is the way to go.


Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.

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