T N Ninan: Entrepreneurs unleashed

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

To understand the entrepreneurship story in India, you have to see it from a global perspective. I had the privilege of just that, as a judge for this year's Ernst & Young's World Entrepreneur Award Programme.

This meant I could read up on the details of 32 country winners taking part in the award programme, and meet them individually, before the global winner was chosen.

And since there were winners from rich and poor countries, from all the continents (the notable exclusions were China, Taiwan and South Korea), the list covered pretty much everything one could wish for.

Looking at past winners from other countries, and talking to them, gave a perspective over time as well.

The point that hits you in the face is that the most exciting entrepreneurs now tend to be from the emerging markets.

This may have something to do with the nature of a fully developed market, where the leading players' positions in specific markets are entrenched, the big global corporations already have their territories staked out and new entrepreneurs who want to strike out on their own have little choice other than to go in for small, niche positions""where they play only a very marginal role in the national economy.

In countries like India and South Africa, or even the transition economies like Poland (and I am sure China and Taiwan), by comparison, the opportunities seem limitless, and national champions can emerge from nowhere, and then hope to conquer international markets as well.

The Indian story stands out even among the emerging markets. The country winners over the last five years, since the global contest began, have been Brijmohan Munjal, Mukesh Ambani, NR Narayana Murthy, Ratan Tata and Sunil Mittal.

Admittedly, two of the five have been inheritors and therefore had a base on which to build, but the others are start-up creators of altogether new entities.

And looking at what is on offer from the other countries, it becomes obvious that India is producing entrepreneurs of exceptional quality and ability, people who are building socially relevant businesses in economically mainstream areas like transportation, energy and communication, on a scale that would simply not be possible in most other economies.

All five now run businesses that are valued in billions of dollars, they have built them to this scale in as little as 10 or 15 years (we don't realise, for instance, how small Reliance was at the start of the 1990s), and some of them (like Tata) have begun to think truly globally.

Though only one out of the five has been crowned as the world entrepreneur of the year (Narayana Murthy, two years ago), there probably couldn't have been any year in which the Indian candidate was not one of the two or three figuring in the final round.

These five may be exceptional individuals, but they also represent a larger group of entrepreneurs with outstanding track records.

All one has to do is go down the list of members in Business Standard Billionaire Club and the point quickly becomes obvious: India is now hospitable territory for wealth and value creation, and for business success flowing from vision and drive.

The global surveys tell us that the Indian environment is still hostile to business (in terms of the number of days it takes to set up a company, the number of clearances to be obtained, infrastructure constraints, and so on), and that is all true. But the successful builders of businesses seem to treat these as minor obstacles.

The one developed economy where you still get exciting new entrepreneurs is, to nobody's surprise, the United States. This clearly has something to do with technological breakthroughs (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Andy Grove), with the culture of trying new things or old things in new ways (Michael Dell), and with creating wealth out of everyday activities (like this year's winner of the global contest, who has set up billion-dollar businesses in waste management and video rentals!).

When China joins the award programme, we are bound to see another exciting bunch of entrepreneurs emerge from the shadows with impressive records. What this short list does tell us is where most of the action now lies, and India is certainly on that list.