I thought we were done with the startup bubble in India. I thought the age where every Tom, Dick, and Harry would consider themselves entrepreneurs and start something up was behind us. I thought whoever is starting up these days, would do so only after establishing beyond doubt that there was a tangible problem they were solving and there was a large enough market that wanted that problem solved.
And then a couple of days ago, I read an article about a Bollywood actor, one best known for playing the entrepreneurial cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni on the big screen, Sushant Singh Rajput, starting a tech startup. This is the sort of thing that happens right in the middle of a bubble, when celebrities decide that they want in on a fad and start companies.
This is why you had Snoop Doggy Dogg start his own cryptocurrency. But the Indian startup scene had gotten out of a couple of such bubbles, and there was no discernible wave to ride in starting up for celebrities. Cryptocurrencies did not cause the same ripples here as they did elsewhere. Machine learning, and artificial intelligence are possibly waves celebrities might eventually target, but it is too early to do so now, for them at least.
So when I saw a headline about Sushant Singh Rajput becoming an entrepreneur, I decided I will read the article too, because I was curious. At the very least, to figure out if I had missed out some bubble. His startup is called Innsaei. It apparently is an Icelandic word meaning intuition. Of course, it tells you nothing about what the startup might be into. For that, let me quote tweets from Sushant, ones that all press coverage duly printed, for there was little else to report.
“Announcing my first venture #Innsaei with my business partner @ivarunmathur. The convergence of #IntellectualProperty and Emerging Technologies. @OnInnsaei.”
Okay, so far so vague. I do not know what this startup is really about, and maybe Sushant will clear the mist in his next tweet.
“Emerging technologies are disrupting socio-cultural and economic structures at an exponential pace and this will impact key areas like education, employment, entertainment & health @OnInnsaei.”
This is where I gave up. I know it is a grammatically correct sentence, yet, all those words neatly put together made no sense at all. In my past columns, I have harped enough times on how crucial it is for a startup to be very clear about the problem that they are solving, for it is only then that they can achieve any sort of product and market fit. I have also talked about how important it is to be able to clearly enunciate the business model in a sentence or two. When a startup fails either of these two criteria, I almost always write them off. And Sushant’s startup fails both these heuristics.
Of course, there is the likelihood that these perfectly logical thumb rules and heuristics will fail, and the startup may actually succeed. For it is a man with much privilege and the security blanket that it brings who has started it, and such access goes a long way in making something successful. Either way, I hope it is just a blip and not a trend.
The author heads product at a mid-sized startup in the real estate space
