Co-founder of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, spoke about the abundance of opportunity or what he referred to as the ‘tyranny of choice’ in terms of the avenues for entrepreneurs. He agreed that big and small energy are lucrative avenues, but for different reasons.
Speaking with Nikhil Kamath on the podcast ‘People by WTF’, Nilekani was asked what he would suggest to a 20-year old with a capital of Rs 1 crore.
“I think I have never seen so many opportunities. I think the ability for young people today to create successful companies has never been higher. But I'm confused with too many opportunities… There is something called the tyranny of choice. You know, there's so many things to choose from,” he told Nikhil Kamath.
“So half of your life is spent deciding what not to do. So you chip away and remove stuff from your thing and focus on a few things. But the opportunity is huge,” he said.
Kamath asked Nilekani if he had to pick a sector, which would it be. “Like right now we're hearing a lot of defence is big energy. Transition is big, like I personally have been researching what to do in energy transition for a year,” revealed Kamath.
Nilekani agreed to energy transition being the next big thing. “Any outlook on that sector or any inside the energy transition is huge. It's going to involve trillions of dollars. But where do investors make money in the private markets? It is not clear because energy transition is a big capital game, right? I mean, building massive solar plants or stuff. There's big energy and little energy. Big energy is the grid. Little energy is thousands of homes having batteries and rooftop solar. So the actual opportunity is in little energy where there's lots of players,” said Nilekani, adding that the question is how can one make it efficient and create the markets there.