9: Kunal Shah on Being an Entrepreneur in India
Over 90% of Indian startups fail within 5 years of inception. What mistakes are these startups making? While some say that ‘premature scaling’ is perhaps, the number one cause, our speaker on this podcast feels the problem lies in the basic foundation of the startup & insufficient understanding of the market. “Startups in India are so good at creating solutions, they spend very little time understanding the problem” says Kunal Shah, Co-Founder of FreeCharge- which was one of India’s most innovative business models. Shah who spent years doing consumer surveys and behaviour analysis before launching FreeCharge in 2011, is an ardent believer of “Plan better than fail fast” strategy. He’s not just someone who has scaled a business but has also delivered one of India's largest acquisitions of his times. And now after mentoring and investing in over 100 startups, Kunal is all set to start-up again. In this episode of Building It Up with Bertelsmann, Kunal Shah talks about how an entrepreneur should mould himself for all the phases, one hex that’s curtailing ‘success stories’ in Indian startups, his next big startup idea and all the 'theories' that resulted in his business success. All this and more on this episode.