BANGALORE: Bangalore is known as Silicon Valley of India, but the nature of entrepreneurship in the city is changing. This fact was analyzed at the TimesLitFest last week by two expert panels titled: 'New Retail v/s Old Retail’ and the 'Changing Faces of Entrepreneurship: 1980 and 2015'.

The speakers were Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy, Zivame CEO Richa Kar, author of Supermarketwalla and Vivek Kaul, author of Easy Money, Reliance Retail CEO Damodar Mall, Portea Medical CEO Meena Ganesh, and Snapdeal Co-Founder Kunal Bahl. The ways in which entrepreneurship is changing include:

Entrepreneurship is starting at younger ages.

The panelists observed that the profile of entrepreneurs has changed from the first internet bubble. Narayana Murthy says that they are more confident, daring and tech savvy. Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal said that founders are also becoming younger. He explained that entrepreneurs in the past started companies when they were in their forties after they had saved some money and built up contacts, but today’s entrepreneurs are right out of college, and it is seen as a glamorous profession.

Information is easily available.

Infosys founder Murthy says that the company provides jobs to more than 150,000 employees in 90 countries, and serves foreign clients, but all the revenue comes back to India. Flipkart is based on an idea that took root and America, and applies it to the Indian market. The panelists also agree that there is more capital available to startups these days and a greater free flow of information. 

Richa Kar, CEO of Zivame said that technology democratizes entrepreneurship, and Kunal Bahl agrees. "There is no more asymmetry of information between different parts of the world. A business model can appear in one country, and a few months later it is replicated and adopted in another part of the world thanks to the Internet”

Companies must think of scaling globally.

"Scale is important for a start-up. Think big, but take one day at a time," advised Kunal Bahl. In today’s tech world scaling, expanding and diversifying rapidly is the only way to keep up with the competition. However, it is important to find the ideas that will scale well. Bahl cautioned that it is important for startups to be flexible in their early stages, as pivoting becomes harder as a company scales. If aspects of a company are not working, change them immediately.

Innovation is about more than money

Infosys was one of the first companies in the world to sign the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002, and refused to pay bribes in the 1980s to import computers into India. The business climate in india is much fairer as a result of their vision.

Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal is similarly motivated to change things for the better.  He said the company's plans were inspired by the message of a beautiful Chinese proverb: "If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help others. And that is the goal of Snapdeal -- to help a million entrepreneurs become successful via an online marketplace.”

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