Entrepreneurship and India

Entrepreneurship is the most widely growing term in Indian Business context today. So, what it is all about and why India is so much obsessed with it now. Let us figure out its history and dominance in India. Entrepreneurship means different things to different people. Conceptually and in practice, the term hints of no stereotypical model.

The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish- French economist Richard Cantillon. This term first appeared in the French Dictionary "Dictionnaire Universal de Commerce" of Jacques des Bruslons published in 1723. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to help launch a new venture or enterprise and accept full responsibility for the outcome. Today entrepreneur is one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods

It is very hard to find out the origin of the entrepreneur. However, we can trace the study done in the field of entrepreneurship. In the late 17^th century Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith started studying entrepreneurship but this work didn’t had any major impact. In the late 19^th century, with the rise of business and economics this concept became much more prominent.

The entrepreneur who implements ‘new combinations of means of production’ plays a crucial role in disturbing the status quo through innovation — or ‘creative destruction’ — and thereby becomes an agent of change.  As such, the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ achieved by a constantly innovating entrepreneur could generate the conditions for:

·         Increasing opportunities for employment (comprising various competitive skill sets);

·         Additional wealth creation;

·         Introduction and dissemination of new methods and technology; and

·         Overall economic growth.

 It is in the creation of more wealth, and in the constant innovation from prevailing to the next best practices, that the significance and importance of Entrepreneurship skill.

As such, the development of Entrepreneurship in a particular milieu depends not on a single overriding factor but rather on ‘a constellation of factors’ at the individual, societal and national levels. Entrepreneurship depends on individual motivations, individual experiences, socio-cultural (including family) traditions, educational opportunities, availability of relevant skills and attitudes, supporting financial institutions and access to credit, existence of commercial trading centres, supporting infrastructure including trade routes with efficient transport and communication facilities, macro-economic environment and overall political stability. It has also been argued that Innovation and Entrepreneurship flourish best in decentralized systems by empowered people, who are willing to explore new ideas as well as willing to deal with exogenous influences.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA

Entrepreneurship has been ‘embedded in the Indian genius and is a part of its tradition’. To quote the renowned economist, T.N. Srinivasan, ‘India has been an entrepreneurial society…we had the entrepreneurial skill but suppressed it for too long a time… and now it is thriving.’ The entrepreneurial spirit is an ongoing characteristic of India’s history, particularly visible in a number of communities engaged primarily in trading. Traditionally, the Entrepreneurship of such communities is facilitated principally by the successful use of informal ‘entrepreneurial ecosystems’ and interdependent business networks. Further, there is also a rich tradition within the Indian diaspora, spanning the past several hundred years, whose spirit of enterprise is legion.

Recent surveys, such as those undertaken by Goldman Sachs and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, have estimated that India has the potential to be among the world’s leading economies by 2050. Further,  India’s economy can potentially gain significantly from the country’s characteristic features — a democratic open society, a strong technology base (with capacity for leapfrogging), unparalleled diversity, vibrant capital markets (including growing private equity and venture capital markets), an increasingly youthful population (50% of India is 25 years and younger), a sizeable market of a large number of customers with vast unmet needs as well as an environment of full and free competition in the private sector.