THE THIRD WAVE OF STARTUPS

How Startups will define the next wave of internet

Text: Thenmozhi Shanmugam    Photos: Various Sources    Illustrations: Jithin Mohan

In the last couple of months at fundcloud, we have been meeting the business leaders from all walks and educating them about our new community initiative, philosophy, and ethos. A few committed community leaders came forward supporting us at the initiative, but a majority of the business house leaders are still skeptical about the prospects of new tech startups generating exponential returns. We realized there is a general lack of trust when it comes to investing in startups in spite of being in an era of internet business dominating the commerce space in India. In this article, I’ll try to take a broader understanding of how the world is shaping around startups and why we should care to become agile, stay curious and compete on this universal stage.

A devoted pupil of world’s connected networks and commerce, I strongly believe that Western global industry trends make a high impact on how we lead our business, select technology, influence our education and in also our lifestyle management to get on par with the developed countries. Kochi offers a high quality of life, the lifestyle experience in this city is more comparable to the west than other Indian cities and we are proud this fact. While I was researching to try and understand the industry trends, I realized that the best learning lessons come from the entrepreneurs who have done it before us and helped set the stage for the younger generation to thrive. The same is very well represented in a trendsetter book by Mr. Steve Case, Founder and CEO of America Online (AOL), who took the company public with a $70 Million valuation to $160 Billion dollars merger with Times Warners group, one of the largest acquisition ever in the history of the Internet era ever. With due credits and respect to the author Steve Case Foundation, I have picked up the best excerpts from the book, which can be readily applied to our local economy and I hope might serve as a wake-up call for our business leaders to act in a proactive manner and come forward in the engagement with startups.

“We offer the perspective of trying to build America online in three waves, the First wave of the internet from 1985 -1999, ridden by the first generation of companies of the likes of Apple, Cisco, IBM, Sun microsystems, Sprint which laid the foundation for building the internet. Second Wave of companies post dotcom, from 2000 – 2015, with a surge in Internet usage, exponential smartphone adaptation, led to explosion of social media creation & of thriving app economy led by Amazon, Google, facebook, UBER, Flipkart, Ola, Inmobi, Makemytrip, Snapchat, Waze a few to mention including our home build companies.” As Steve quotes, there is an interesting new wave which is about to break, and a growing evidence is that this Third wave will be defined by the ‘Internet of Everything’, a new phase of technological evolution, a phase where the Internet will be fully integrated into every part of our lives – how we learn, how we deal, how we manage our finances, how we get around, how we work, even what we eat. As the Third wave gains momentum, every industry leaders in every economic sector will be at risk of being disrupted.

Think about what’s been happening in the Silicon valley over the past few decades and imagine what it will look like when we apply that same culture of innovation and scope of ambition to every part of our local economy. That’s the Third Wave, and it’s not just coming; it’s already here. Every business leader should be asking right now, as everyone else is about to ride the Third Wave, am I being prepared to ride or am I going to see it pass it by? As an Entrepreneur, the trick of the trade is to carry more information and knowledge about your industry vertical, know the key players and influencers; also working to accelerate and maintain your market positioning. If technology can come as an aid to help your traditionally run business and ace up to the next wave of operations, equipping yourself with the latest technology trends, apps and tools become your operating network. If you were to ride a Third Wave company, it will come down to three P’s: Partnerships, Policy & Perseverance.

The winners of the Third wave will be those who chases these big-impact ideas with a sense of urgency, and methodically & diplomatically executes them. Understanding the dynamics of your industry, having a clear view of potential partnerships and policy issues will increasingly stand as the pre-requisites for success in this new generation wave. Therefore, engaging emerging technology startups in your industry vertical is by far the best way to stay updated. We as traditional business houses, can not be complacent about the Third Wave. Not embracing the new technology trends and failure in applying this new generation way of operations can lead you to lose market leadership, which I believe every business leader should be cautious about.

At fundcloud partners, we run a hybrid model of selecting a handful of emerging startups who are category defining their business. They are not just another tech startup with quick turn around, but creating actual value and revenues while adapting a new technology trend in an otherwise conventionally run market. Few examples being the virtual publishing which trying to disrupt the print publishing industry, or a recipe book app to discover authentic original recipes from food bloggers, or creating a customer-centric operational analytics to name a few trends we spotted locally and believe has potential to be game changers in the industry that they are in. Our selection criteria to work with startups is explained in the info graph.