A wake-up call for new-age entrepreneurs to up their innovation game

In the end, Koo was an unfulfilled promise.

That a social networking service provider – which at one point was being talked of as India’s possible answer to the then Twitter (now X) – would cease operations in less than four years of it emerging as one of the winners of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge – is the reason for the disappointment. After all, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had mentioned Koo during his Mann ki Baat address in August 2020 while highlighting how the winners of the app innovation challenge could help script a new India.

Koo – which possibly saw one of its best times in India in early 2021 – could never build on its initial successes to get to a position from where it could mount a serious challenge to Twitter/X for emerging as the leader in its arena. For the most part, Koo remained an also-ran trying to play catch up with its bigger competitor as it failed to obtain buy-in of the desired extent from its target users.

Lessons for Young Entreprenuers

While there could be endless debate on all the aspects where Koo could have done better, from a personal standpoint, one would hope that the Koo episode serves as a wake-up call for young, local entrepreneurs to focus their attention in a bigger way on groundbreaking innovation of a global scale to ensure the long-term sustainability of their businesses.

It may be quicker to develop and launch, a tweaked, local version of a globally well-liked offering but one can never hope to find a continued, high enough resonance among the target audience beyond the period when curiosity about the new offering is at its peak. The challenge to retain user interest for those coming up with the tweaked/local versions increases further if the organization behind the internationally admired product/service keeps making frequent changes to the offering to ensure its continued popularity with people worldwide.

Irrespective of how she/he may be favourably disposed to the local pe vocal (being vocal about the local) philosophy, for instance, the average Indian also may not find a sufficiently strong reason to patronize a product/service offering for a significant length of time if the only notable USP of that offering is that it has been developed by an Indian company. She/he may well ask as to why they should opt for the local tweaked offering when the original is available for their use and is suitably meeting their requirements.

Fundraising Challenge for Startups

Raising funds also becomes less challenging even during a so-called ‘funding winter’ if those seeking money from VC funds, PE firms, etc can demonstrate that the innovations have the potential to change the landscape in which they operate globally. Passing off tweaks to already existing offerings as innovation may work in India, for example, when the global offerings are not easily accessible to average citizens but not if those offerings are within the reach of ordinary people. Blaming the ‘funding winter’ whenever a business fails to take off may sometimes appear as the entrepreneur/s trying to take the easy way out to cover their own failures.

From a larger perspective, more new-age entrepreneurs upping their innovation game and trying to make their offerings global benchmarks could provide a fillip to key national initiatives such as ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’, besides adding further lustre to the ‘Startup India’ initiative. In the process, India’s growth and development could be sped up, with that also reflecting in more, new, and better-quality job creation in the world’s most populous nation. Although India has significantly improved its position in the Global Innovation Index (GII) from 81 in 2015 to 40 in 2023, it still lags many of its Asian peers on the GII parameter.

Considering its famed human talent and its large pool of businesspeople with the ability to think outside the box, India must aim to stamp its presence worldwide on a bigger level in the business arena. More entrepreneurs displaying the willingness to push themselves on the innovation front could greatly help this cause.