Vibrant Gujarat Start Up Summit 2016

I had the opportunity to attend the Vibrant Gujarat Start up summit 2016 a few days back. This piece is about my opinion about it.

The 2 day summit had listed a lot of promising events and affairs and had the makings of a very successful event. However, it kind of left you high and dry and wanting for something of substance. I reached there a couple of hours late, around 10:30 AM. To my surprise, in spite of having pre-registered and paid online, there was no kit, or an itinerary available for me. I was told, they were all out, despite that fact, that I could see a stack of them lying around. After the usual push-shove-cajole routine that we Indians are so used to, I was given a cloth bag and a brochure, with more advertisement material than relevant. I headed off to the events and the lectures and the displays. There were a few good start up ideas lined up there. I have to make a special mention of an electric bike “e-motion”. That guy impressed me with his sheer tenacity. His proud and doting mother was helping in everything, right from canvassing to boosting his morale. I found only a couple of others interesting and new.

There were a few groups, that were focussed on telling a start-up how to run and succeed. I called them the coaching classes of success, like a Shiv Nadar book. Personally, I hate those books, always have and most likely always will. But, these how to run a start-up successfully groups, took my abhorrence to a new level. I can understand, that there are certain do’s and don’ts, but entire companies running on that??!! Really!! I cannot be the judge of their ideas and I won’t even attempt to. What I detest is why would I want to have someone tell me how to run my start-up? I would choose to do it, to get freedom from all people who keep on guiding us without a need. People who would like to see things run their way. I want to run away from all those rudimentary ideas and cages and that’s why I would want to run a start-up to show the world how things can be done. To have someone guide me for it from the scratch is clearly counter-intuitive. Are we promoting the start-up culture too much, with too many immature people entering it and thereby creating a cess-pool of more failures than successes? And where were these so called gurus, when entire Lehmanns collapsed and an entirely “Flip”ped cart is running successfully. Makes me laugh. I pity the people who would go to such coaches. Like the Kota pattern for IITs.

Speaking of the rest of the companies there, there were no “START-UP”, most of them were “ME-TOO”. People have forgotten what a start-up should imply. Opening another kirana shop isn’t a start up, it’s a business. You can run it successfully and mint millions out of it, but you are not a start-up, you are a businessman. I don’t mean that businessmen are bad or non-creative or even at a lower level. I myself come from a family of businessmen. But I would urge people to uphold the dignity of the word. I understand we all want to be associated with creating a start-up, but just labelling any venture with that tag will dilute its importance.

Coming back to the event itself, it was another boring, run-of-the-mill college fest. Did I say college fest? Oh yes, cause it felt that way. The whole event had a lot of college fest type environment, where things don’t work and there is no coordination. There were no food coupons for late entrants like me. Then, at lunch hour, when I and a few others took up the case with the organisers, they were quick enough to dismiss of any responsibility, as they didn’t have a say in the number of coupons to be given. They made some excuse about having only 1000 food coupons to give away per day. I was like ‘huh?”. It didn’t make sense to me, but they were convinced by the iron clad logic. Then there was a fight in the food court, because a lot of hungry people in a bad summit, make up for a lot of frustration, and frustration comes out in the most uncanny places. The lectures and discussions were also more of an advertising campaign, rather than a discussion forum. Weren’t even yawn-worthy. The 2 days passed and boy was I glad it was over.

But not all was bad. The highlights of the event were that I met a few people, who were actually of a start-up mentality and made some new friends. I guess it was worth it after all.

Take my gist with a pinch of salt, if you wish. Man up. Be brave. Chart your own territory. Carve your own paths. Let those coaching classes eat dust. Leave them behind. Kotas can fill up IITs (pun intended), but you cannot survive in chopping seas. The thrill of a start-up is to learn to survive, to adapt and to learn to learn. These tricks will prove useful in the long term in your life…. The coaching classes will fade away, your inner guru wont. Build your inner guru. Be in a start-up because you are dying to be in one, not because its fancy and the in thing to do. If by some twist of destiny, you land up in one, be ready to lap up whatever you can learn. Don’t let the coaching classes tell you what you should learn. And if God forbid, you don’t ever have a start-up experience, then thank your stars for letting you be normal!!