Building Globally: The Startup Moment in India

Why super{set} is advancing entrepreneurship across the planet… PLUS: Why did the DevOps engineer need glasses?…

Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting super{set}’s first-ever global meet-up in Bengaluru, India. It was a blast: super{set} companies in attendance included MarkovML, Kapstan, Headlamp Health, SuperCMO, and RevAmp, joining 100 attendees fired up about building global startups from their home perch in India.

Watch the super{set} Bengaluru Meetup Sizzle Reel

Here’s a taste of the event:

Tech is Accelerating in India

When I moved to the US in the mid-1990s, you could count the number of start-ups in India on one hand. What a difference 25 years makes! In Bengaluru, residential neighborhoods that once had a relaxed, retirement-town vibe transformed into vibrant start-up hubs that are building tomorrow’s technology today. The culture in Bengaluru today is eerily similar to that of San Francisco - coffee shops and bars filled with young, aspiring entrepreneurs talking about the problems their start-ups are solving (or will solve), the technologies used, and the promise the future holds for them.

Several initiatives have driven this shift in mindset and growth of the start-up ecosystem. Aadhar, the world’s largest biometric identity system,  launched in 2010 and covers nearly all Indian citizens. UPI (Unified Payments Interface), a protocol and instant payment system that facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions, is widely adopted. You can pay your local vegetable grocer or make donations to your local temple, mosque, or church via UPI. A standard set of APIs for digital identity verification, payments, and data sharing has enabled many start-ups to build creative solutions that make life easier for consumers in India.

The scene at the recent super{set} India meetup

India recently surpassed China as the world’s most populous country with an overwhelmingly digital-native population. Over 50% of India’s population is under 30, and the median age is 28. Additionally, India has 751.5 million Internet users—almost equal to the total population of the US and EU combined!

Today, India's most significant weakness is its lack of world-class infrastructure (physical, not cloud). Bengaluru is plagued with traffic congestion and water issues. Significant Investments are being made in transportation, clean energy, and real estate, but the rate of change is not consistent. I hope these investments will bear fruit and have a positive impact in the next five years.

 So what does this mean for super{set}? The availability of high-quality technical talent, a bold, fearless, and thriving entrepreneurial community, and the ability to build capital-efficient teams that know when to strategically use jugaad make me more bullish than ever about building global companies in India!

Why Build Globally?

Here’s what I learned from our recent meetup and why super{set} will continue to advance entrepreneurship across the planet with global teams:

1. There’s an immense well of engineering talent.

There will always be diffuse technical talent across the globe, but India, more than anywhere else, has a density of top-notch technical talent across a diverse set of domains. There are two reasons for this: 

(a) more and more US-based companies, large and small, have established product engineering teams in India

(b) more importantly, many start-ups have been built from the ground up in India, serving the Indian market. If you’re building a B2C or Consumer Fintech start-up in India, a 1% penetration results in a user base of 14 Million users (that’s ~40% of the US population!). So, even “small” start-ups have to deal with scaling issues much earlier than their US counterparts! 

Our experience at the Bengaluru meetup only reinforced our perception of talent density. For outsiders, Bengaluru is the “Silicon Valley of India.” It is India's new startup hub, and it has a hilly landscape and mild climate that rivals San Francisco. Building teams in Bengaluru isn’t just about finding a co-founder or a few key players but about assembling a powerhouse team of tigers that can execute on a global stage from day one. For that, the density of engineering talent can’t be beat.

2. The risk appetite for talent has changed.

In recent years, I've observed a palpable shift in the motivation and hunger of the Indian startup ecosystem. Gone are the days of cautious career moves and playing it safe. Today, Indian professionals are more willing than ever to bet on startups and embrace the uncertainties and opportunities that come with them. The talent we met and interacted with in Bengaluru displayed an evident readiness to take on risk in exchange for high-velocity personal growth - showing that the ecosystem is maturing in a way that aligns with our vision of fostering entrepreneurship worldwide.

3. Startups can pull off a global presence like never before.

The first-ever team that super{set} built out in India came at the insistence of Pankaj Rajan, co-founder at MarkovML. At the time, we had a few qualms about having one team sitting across two continents, but we trusted Pankaj and bet on the immense benefits that would come with the global team. We found many of the challenges we expected: communication, culture, and overcoming the “short-order-cook” mindset.

With some plain talk and seeing things as they are, not as we wish them to be, we built up the super{set} playbook for global collaboration. We found a good rhythm for stand-ups and asynchronous communication. We leaned into the super{set} culture playbook and evangelized a strong shared identity. And we fostered a sense of ownership and grit for our teams, wherever they sit, to deeply engage with the customer, the product, and each other. Today, there are teams led by MarkovML’s Varun Srivastava, Kapstan’s Harshil Vyas, Headlamp Health’s Manaswini Sugatoor, and SuperCMO’s Amit Gupta - not to mention the hub of our super{set} People and Culture efforts in India, Global People Architect Ila Sharma (Thanks Ila for organizing the meetup!).

I can easily see many people I met at our recent Bengaluru meet-up sitting at the whiteboard in a super{set} office - in India or San Francisco. We have the playbook to make them successful team members wherever they sit.

There’s Never Been A Better Time to Build Globally

Building cross-border isn’t for every startup. There’s a reason why in my two previous build-outs before starting super{set} - Rapt (sold to Microsoft) and Krux (sold to Salesforce) - we avoided building a global team. Building a geographically distributed team requires a significant shift in mindset, embracing a culture of asynchronous communication and comprehensive documentation. I wouldn’t say we’ve cracked the code entirely. Still, by hiring leaders like Varun, Manaswini, Harshil, and Amit, who’ve done this before, we’re learning fast and building playbooks that future super{set} companies can use. The late-night and early-morning calls don’t go away, so that’s another thing to get used to.

Even still, with a changing Indian workforce and expanding startup ecosystem, combined with the super{set} playbook for scaling global teams sitting in the U.S., India, Israel, or wherever, is too powerful an opportunity to ignore. There’s never been a better time to build, and I can’t wait for the next super{set} meetup in India.

Let me know in the comments: what challenges have you faced in leading or working for a global team, wherever you are based?

The panel discussion I led with leaders from super{set} companies Headlamp Health, MarkovML, and Kapstan

🔗 Links Worth A Read

• NY Times: “Think Bangalore, not South China”  Poor Nations Are Writing a New Handbook for Getting Rich

• Tech Crunch: Boutique startup studio super{set} gets another $90 million to co-found data and AI companies

• Kapstan.io: Kapstan Changelog #03 | Cron Applications | AWS ECR Support

• WSJ: For Data-Guzzling AI Companies, the Internet Is Too Small

• Tomisms: Startup Studio Myths, Busted

PS: Why did the DevOps engineer need glasses?

Because they couldn’t C#

Kapstan Engineering on-site in Goa