Selling useful product is key to start-ups' success: Experts

For any start-up to be a successful business model the key is the choice of sector and the product it is coming up with, believes Thyrocare founder and MD A Velumani. He said that most often, not having what customers want is the biggest bottleneck for the growth of start-ups.

Interacting with media persons on the sidelines of 'Venture Leap' organised by Gujarat Venture Fund Ltd (GVFL) and The Indus Entrepreneurs – Ahmedabad chapter (TiE – Ahmedabad), Velumani said, "Customers will not buy what you sell but you have to sell what customers want to buy," he said. On the importance of innovation for start-ups, he emphasised that consumers should benefit from innovation and then only innovation will have relevance. He advised start-ups against starting a business very early in their career but they should get some experience and nuances of doing a business and then only start their venture to minimise chances of a failure.

Sanjay Randhar, director of GVFL said that the start-up ecosystem in Gujarat said that because of the efforts of various stakeholders, including the government, in Gujarat over past 2-3 years, the ecosystem is coming of age.

However, he felt that there is a growing need for local entrepreneurs and industry bodies to interact with start-ups. He focussed on more efforts to commercialise the innovation rather than doing innovations in a silo.

With the maturing of ecosystem, availability of mentors is not a problem, said Prashant Halari, chairman of TiE – Ahmedabad said that mentors should not be looked upon for attracting investment, but in a way that the time he devotes for the benefit of startups. However, he feels that scaling up of start-ups in Gujarat is still a challenge. "You may grow to a 250 employee company. But from here, if you want to have 500 employees, you may have to look at other cities," said Halari.

Experts felt that there is a growing need for local success stories to interact with start—ups in order to motivate them. "Success stories are not highlighted and discussed in the manner it should happen," Randhar said by giving example of eInfochips, which made money not only for investors but also its employees.