Tag: why startups fail

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Startup

5 Major Reasons behind Why Indian Startups Fail

why indian startup fails

The Indian startup ecosystem continues to expand and grow rapidly. Right from the Government support, increased participation of corporates, evolution of the investor landscape, incredible global exposure, and the growth of digital infrastructure in India- the various elements of the startup ecosystem are coming together in a melodious symphony.

According to a NASSCOM report, the Indian startup ecosystem has the potential to grow 4X by 2025, and the number of unicorns is expected to be 95-105. The cumulative valuation of these unicorns is expected to reach USD 350-390Bn.

Despite all the favorable factors, 90% of the startups fail in India within the five years of their inception, according to a report by IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics.

Wondering why startups fail? Here are some of the key reasons behind the high startup failure rate:

  1. Lack of Innovation

One of the crucial reasons why startups fail in India is their lack of innovation. Innovative business ideas help to attract customers, beat the competition, and resolves challenging situations.

Although India is said to have the third-largest ecosystem in the world, the country lacks meta-level start-ups like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Indian startups must drive their business operations with innovation, rather than replicating global startups.

  1. Lack of Funds

There must be millions of creative ideas floating around. However, turning these ideas into reality requires funds. Insufficient fundraising is a roadblock that leads to the shutdown of many Indian startups.

For startups that manage to receive seed funding, the inability to raise follow-up funds becomes the major cause of startup failure. So the startups must think about having effective business and revenue models.

  1. Lack of Focus

Be it a product, its features, or the market positioning, few investors and mentors firmly believe that the founders of Indian startups often start spreading themselves too thin.

A startup is best suited to cater to a particular problem for a specific segment. Though the business dynamics will keep evolving and the focus will not remain the same forever, it is essential for founders to sharply define what exactly they want to build.

  1. Right Market for Products

One of the biggest reasons why startups fail in India- the consumer does not need its products. Many founders in India end up falling in love with their product without realizing if it solves the customer`s need. Thus, it is important to target the right market segment and gain an in-depth understanding of your customers.

  1. Lack of Strong Leadership

Startups in India are mostly driven by the vision of their founders and core team members. While the innovative idea is significant in the journey of a startup, the absence of strong leadership is another reason why startup fails in India.

While some entrepreneurs are born with strong leadership skills, others can develop them. If you do not have the leadership skills, you can delegate the role to someone who has a futuristic vision.

You can also find a mentor to help you build and develop leadership skills. You can also study and gain an in-depth knowledge of leadership skills with the Everything about Entrepreneurship course. Learn the essential strategies to become a strong leader for your startup by talking with the top industry experts. To know more click here: https://www.badabusiness.com/?ref_code=ArticlesLeads

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Finance Startup

Why Do Investors Invest in Startups? Here’s How Investors Add Value to Startups and Help Entrepreneurs

Startups and Investors (Photo Credits: Pexels)

For any business to flourish, there needs to be good investment and planning that will help the firm reach its target audience and go beyond! Here’s where the role of an investor comes into picture. An investor puts capital to use for long-term gains, while an entrepreneur seeks to generate profits by using those funds. Thus an investor is a crucial aspect for any startup, who typically generates returns by deploying capital. Investing in startups is a risky proposition. However, the low requirement for overhead capital along with high upside potential, makes it lucrative for the investors to put their bets on startups.

Basically, an investor is a person that allocates capital with the expectation of a future financial return or to gain an advantage. An investor can choose to invest in-equity, debt securities, real estate, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call options, futures, etc.

According to the official website of Startup India- startupindia.gov.in, investors particularly venture capitalists (VCs) add value to startups in a lot of ways. Some of them are listed below:

  1. Stakeholder Management: The investors are the ones who manage the company board and leadership to facilitate smooth operations of the startup. Moreover, their functional experience and domain knowledge of working and investing with startups imparts vision and direction to the company.
  2. Raise Funds: Investors are best guides for the startup as they help to raise subsequent rounds of funding on the basis of stage, maturity, sector focus etc. The investors aid in networking and connection for the founders to pitch their business to other investors.
  3. Recruiting The Best to Achieve Business Goals: Finding great talent and best-fit human capital is critical for startups, especially when it comes to recruiting senior executives to manage and drive business goals. The venture capitalists, with their extensive network can help bridge the talent gap by recruiting the right set of people at the right time.
  4. Proper Marketing of the product: The venture capitalists (VCs) assist with marketing strategy for your product/service.
  5. Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Activity: VCs have their eyes and ears open to merger and acquisition opportunities in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to enable greater value addition to the business through inorganic growth.
  6. Organizational Restructuring:As a young startup grows to an established company, they help with the right organizational structuring and introduce processes to increase capital efficiency, lower costs and scale efficiently.
Categories
Startup

5 Reasons why 99% of Startups Fail

The Startup Failure Report card!

The question on everyone’s mind is ’Why do most Startups fail’? It is a heartbreaking fact that 8 out of 10 startups fail in the first year of their business. This can be prevented if one is aware of the mistakes made by startup founders. Here are 5 reasons why startups fail
and what blunders need to be avoided:

1. Lack of Focus on the Consumer & the Market Need

  • A study shows that 42% of startups fail because they were not successful in solving the need of the market.
  • The founders think they have a brilliant idea, build a product, add extensive features but the customer rejects it and then the business runs out of money 

Solution:

  • Know your customer- Talk to them as much as possible, find out what they want; what they expect from a business like yours and then build a solid product.
  • Avoid overload of features- It makes no sense to include ’Nice to have features’ in the model. Most startups fail because these unnecessary shows off only leads to money drain. Focus on solving customer challenges and once the business paces up then see what extra features can be added.
  • Launch a pilot- This means take your market to the market, test it and get feedback. Incorporating opinions and valid points can help improve the business.

2. Variable Market Conditions

The value you offer to the consumer needs to be compelling enough for him to buy your product. It needs to be a ’Must Have’ for him rather than a ’Nice to Have’ product.

  • Unfavourable Economic Situation- Such a crisis is out of your control and can lead to many startups failing. For e.g. there is downturn or a recession in the offing or a lockdown like Coronavirus outbreak, it becomes difficult for the business to sustain.
  • Wrong Timing- Sometimes the product you bring in the market could be ahead of it and the consumer is not ready for it. In the second case, the product can be a ’Copy Cat’ version of other products already in the market. Both these cases are reasons why most start-ups fail. 

3. One-Man Army

Apart from understanding the customer’s need, a successful startup needs a mix of good and talented people.

  • Don’t think that only you can do everything. A solo founder may take 5X longer to outgrow the startup phase
  • Get a well-balanced team in place time to take strategic management decisions
  • Great ideas are generated when you work with a team and it might help in changing the founder’s perception on various issues

4. Premature Expansion

One of the biggest reasons why most startups fail is that they want to run before they learn to walk properly.  

  • Don’t be over-enthusiastic if you get a round of funding. This does not mean that you are ready to scale up drastically
  • Be very sure of the lifetime of your product & customer both and the customer acquisition cost for it
  • If you are not acquiring customers the way you had planned, defer scaling up plans till a solution is met
  • Once you reach a stage where customer acquisition cost is lower and revenue is increasing leading to profitability, you can take the plunge and scale-up

 

5. Running out of cash

The last reason why startups fail is that they run out of cash. The key job of the CEO/Founder is to keep a note of the cash left for working capital or how to make the company cash flow positive

Warren Buffet, an American billionaire & investor said:
  

Rule No.1: Never lose money 

Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1
  • Everything goes wrong if the company runs out of cash before the next milestone is achieved. However, funds can be raised but the valuation at this time could be much lower
  • Define a framework with phases of growth. Get clarity in what phase you will want to conserve cash and in what phase you want to be cash lenient
  • Do not mix your personal finances with business accounts 

We all know now, why most startups fail. But this should not discourage you from becoming an entrepreneur. Instead, it should encourage and make you work harder to achieve your goal. Just remember:

Keep Customer-first over product

Choose a team overwork in isolation

Believe in sustained growth over greed for expansion

Be focused rather than over-ambitious 

And success will become a part of your journey!

 

Categories
Startup

Why Startups Fail in India?

Introduction
  • Are you planning to start a new business?
  • Do you want your Startup to be successful?
  • Do you know why startups fail in India?
No Indian city is among the top-10 most popular Startup Cities in the world, whereas only one Indian company (Asian Paints) could make it into Forbes top-25 innovative companies in the world.
Owing to the inability to run business, funding to Indian Startups plummeted from $7.5 billion in 2015 to $3.5 billion in 2016.
One of the major reasons behind the failure of Indian Startups is the lack of innovation based on consumer’s needs.
If you too are an entrepreneur and struggling to retain your Startup, the following points will help you figure out why startups fail in India and how to recover from the crisis.
Reason #1: Missing Innovation around Customer’s Money Making Model

Undeniably, the major reason why startups fail in India is the lack of exactly needed innovation to cater to the problem of customers, due to which no Indian company could dominate the world market so far.
They lack the innovation to invent a product which can make people’s life easy by understanding their need.
Reason #2: Negative Cash Flow, Negative Working Capital
Another most important reason behind the failure of Startups in India is negative cash flow and negative working capital.
Continuous cash inflow is necessary to run your business. Even if your book of accounts is showing profits, delay in payment may hurt your working capital to continue the operations.
In the absence of adequate working capital owing to delay in cash inflow, you start searching for funds to continue the business, which after some level fades away investor’s trust in you.

Reason #3: Expansion with Negative Margin
Many Startups in India, without having adequate gross margin, go on expanding their business by giving heavy discounts and deals.
Commons reason why startups fail in India are:

  • They don’t build long term plans for a source of profit to cover their profit margin and acquire market.
  • In the quest of selling at the lower price, they keep on compromising with their gross margin and end up being bankrupt.

Reason #4: Lack of Talented Manpower

If you don’t build a team of highly capable, enthusiastic, energetic, and talented people to execute your plan and vision, chances of making your Startup long-lasting would be less.

You need to work on: Competency mapping, Competence assessment of your manpower, and Convert your ideation into execution.

?Reason #5: Scalability with Recurring Revenue Model

To boost the scalability of your business, you need to create a strong base of regular customers to maintain your recurring revenue. Many Startups go on ’making new customers, at the cost of losing existing ones’.

While engaging new customers, they are unable to retain their present customers, which disturb regular inflow of revenue and consequently hurt their profitability and scalability.

Reason #6: Mixed Marketing Signal and Wrong Positioning

The main reason behind why startups fail in India is that most of the Indian entrepreneurs don’t know how to position their product in the market, who is their perfect customer and who is not their perfect customer.

They launch their product, without proper segmentation of customers through studying customers.

It is imperative to position your product on the basis of its identity, price, value, feature, and reliability after studying consumer behavior. It’s marketing and branding strategy will be based on its right positioning.

Reason #7: Releasing Product as a Laggard

The untimely or delayed launch of a product is the prime reason why startups fail in India, which plays the most crucial part of its market share and profitability.

Indian Startups launch their products so late in the market that the market becomes saturated, which compels them to give schemes, discounts, and offers, and end up ruining their profit margin.

Reason #8: Save Yourself from Getting Outcompeted

While launching your business, you need to observe your competitors and be prepared to tackle any disruption caused by them.

Reason #9: Missing the Process of Converting Feedback into Feed-Forward

Taking into account the customer’s feedback and the complaint is what helps you bring appropriate changes in your product. ’If you ignore their feedback and complaints, they will switch to your competitors’.

Customer’s complaints about your product signify that he wants to be with you, but the only thing that he is expecting is to bring change in your product.

Reason #10: Business Model of Complete Eco-System

Digital giants like Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and Android are examples of those who have built a huge ecosystem by converging all stakeholders and customers on a single platform that could cause disruption in the market if they plan to exit.

Identify the reasons for your debacle. Correct it and streamline it. Definitely, you will be the next Unicorn.

From the above 10 points, you would be able to understand why startups fail in India and direct your strategy accordingly to make it successful.