Indian startups need their Krishna to win the new-age ‘Mahabharata’
Unlike other developed economies – when the leaders of Flipkart and Ola came together to seek some form of protection from the government against companies dumping foreign capital to capture market share. They were scoffed at by the elite and criticised by the media. Contrast this to China – where the government has kept the tech sector tightly regulated and has invested billions of dollars in Alibaba and Didi Chuxing through its Sovereign Wealth Fund. It has constantly changed policy to favour local companies and the result is evident to everyone – Amazon, Uber, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube have all lost out to Chinese companies. Having lost out in China, these companies have retrained their laser-sharp focus on the Indian market. With the US companies turning their eyes to India and the Chinese companies becoming big enough to compete against their US counterparts – India will be the Kurukshetra of this battle – and Indians will be ...