There are two kinds of 'technology' startups in India. One that has little innovation, low usability, minimal technology and is often digital based. These are found inside the IIT campuses of this country. These are funded by 'Angel' investors, international PE and venture capitalists firms and their Indian clones, sitting in coffee shops outside these campuses who have no real understanding of technology. They care even less about the social implications of what they're putting their money (sorry, other money) into. They're only object is 5(?)X return. The esteemed pink paged newspapers are full of the stories of these people.
Then there are people across India who invent things because either they, or people they love suffer a problem which they can't bear to see. These could be uneducated, poorly educated faceless people in nameless villages. The parts they use to invent astonishing things are all around us. Their brilliance is in relentlessly putting it all together to make that thing that solves the problem of the ones they care for. And in the process they perhaps provide a link to solving a catastrophic problem the world's grappling with. They too have investors. Their fathers, mothers, relatives, neighbors who donate money (that won't equal the amount of money the PE firms spend in a month at the coffee shops) not expecting anything in return. Their innovations rarely are heard of in the mainline press.
The day we separate the wheat from the chaff, the day we understand and recognize true innovation. The day we look for social impact over return...that day... India will become a genuine value-based economic super-power.
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