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‘Entrepreneurs need to be careful about when they create a buzz about themselves, which should be ideally when you have a compelling and convincing idea to sell.’

The one thing that has struck me about India’s emerging and existing entrepreneurs is their passion and the commitment that I have seen across the board. In addition, there has been a change in mindset, with more risk-taking ability and the stigma of failure being far less than what it used to be.

People are willing to take the risk; they are willing to see if it works and if it doesn’t, moving on to something else. I think this has played a crucial role in young people trying to look beyond the cushy banking and private sector jobs and venturing into entrepreneurship.

A lot of people also prefer to take the entrepreneurial route even when they have the option of a high-paying job. I think this is more to do with societies and families being a lot more forgiving of failure and that has enhanced the risk-taking opportunity.

The other thing that has changed over the years is funding. I think there are lot more people, organizations, VCs and angel investors who are willing to bank on these young entrepreneurs and startups. The trend that we see now is that first generation entrepreneurs are turning into angel investors and VCs themselves.

For instance, if you look at OnMobile, they are now looking at funding or creating an ecosystem for other value-added service (VAS) companies. Narayana Murthy, on the other hand, has started a VC firm, Catamaran, which essentially goes to show that there is a lot more support for entrepreneurs. The ability to network has also increased considerably over the years and now the support system looks good. People are willing to experiment and get around regulations. Entrepreneurs in India are no longer waiting for the government to act.

I have not met a single entrepreneur who looks at government regulations as a constraint to their operations and vision for their company. They look at moving beyond and around it.

Government is increasingly becoming less relevant in the scheme of things. Every possible sector that you can think of—from fashion and technology to mobiles and microfinance—is seeing exciting startups.

When I think of someone as an entrepreneur, it is essentially a person who has managed to create a business on his own, with very little backing. At the same time, however, when we go to second and third generation leaders in a company, are they less of an entrepreneur? We have this debate constantly within our team.

Sometimes I feel that it is sad because a lot of second and third generation leaders have taken their companies to a very different league. I think entrepreneurship is more about people who are trying to do things differently, people who are trying to bring about change through the use of their ideas and innovations.

Indian startups are changing and as the world integrates, they are becoming more and more confident. The new marketing strategies have more to do with the evolution of a startup. Advertising and marketing depends on where you currently stand in the cycle of your business.

Some people make a mistake of over-marketing and that could be a problem. Till the time you have a clear differentiator on what you have to offer, it is best to hold back. I have not seen too much of it and feel by and large Indian entrepreneurs are fairly grounded. It also depends on the entrepreneur’s personality, with some being more flamboyant, outgoing and enjoying engaging with the media. The future for Indian entrepreneurs looks very bright and perhaps never looked better.

While funding is not an issue any more, entrepreneurs are also very aware of whom they invite to be a part of the company when scaling up.

Young Turks is one of the longest running shows on CNBC. Initially it started off as an experiment to see if we could get young faces on the channel and it was more of an audience expansion exercise.

At that point we did not expect the show to last eight years and had planned it more along the lines of being a 13-14 part series. The kind of response that we got over the years has taken me by surprise. The mandate when we started out was to get young CEOs on the show. The constituency that we were addressing was the CEOs and not entrepreneurs and that has been the big change over the years.

We have discovered the relatively unknown entities who did not belong to any big family business and in that sense the show went from being just about young CEOs to focus on young entrepreneurs. For first generation entrepreneurs, it is easier to get into services since it’s simple in terms of regulatory norms and not heavy and intensive when it comes to capex.

In terms of manufacturing and even retail, we have featured many entrepreneurs who are scaling up their operations.

SHEREEN BHAN is the Executive Editor, CNBC TV18 and produces one of the longest running television shows on entrepreneurship, Young Turks.

©Entrepreneur September 2010

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CNBC-TV18, Shereen Bhan, Young Turks