Hungry and Foolish Ind-ennials

Psychology research shows that most of us go through a few identity crises in our lives but are pretty much set on our life's paths early in our years - typically, pre-teen and teenage years. Unless there are truly wrenching events that slam into us later in life. If you use 1991 as a marker to look at Indians living today, there is a clear distinction between those who were born and grew up before then and those after, even after discounting for normal inter-generational changes. Growing up in India and coming into being, so to say, in the 1990s, a decade of relative prosperity for most middle class and urban Indians with the GDP expanding at 6.6 per cent, was different from earlier; so, too, were the 2001 to 2010 years. A youngster who was 12 in 1991 and getting ready to step into mind-forming teen years would today be 35. Someone just getting into school then would be about 28 now and someone 17, 40. It is this generation of Indians - let's call them Ind-ennials - that is running riot in the start-ups space in India. "The difference between earlier and now," said a 42-year-old friend and owner of a small but very profitable logistics business, "is that youngsters today know, no matter what, they will not starve. There's always someone ... a friend, a relative ... that they can fall back upon. That's a big thing when you don't know where or when your next PO is coming from." (PO, as in purchase order.) The start-ups we are talking about, of course, are only those with a conventional corporate structure and not, say, unorganised micro-enterprises engaged in wheelcart trading or running a two-man plumbing outfit. Professor G. Sabarinathan of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, has a synthesised view on why more and more young people are bootstrapping businesses. "There is an X factor type appeal associated with starting up successfully," he told me. Alongside, he added, there is a higher tolerance of risk among both entrepreneurs and investors. "[Today] entrepreneurs start up based on strong hunches as opposed to deep research. As they evolve they will learn that risk tolerance is good if tempered by informed optimism."

At Business Today, we celebrate start-ups every year with a special issue. This year, we have a set of 16 start-ups varied both in the spaces they operate in and the business models they leverage for most value. In a package curated and put together by Senior Associate Editor Goutam Das and Assistant Editor Taslima Khan, and guided by Deputy Editor Alokesh Bhattacharyya, we have start-ups peddling software products, specialising in logistics, weeding out inefficiencies in SME supply chains, event bookings and tea retailing, and, yes, making toys. Find all the videos, comic strips and slideshows at www.businesstoday.in/startups-2014. The entrepreneurial evolution we are living through is big for India. For, more than anything else, it is the millions of start-ups and small businesses in the country that will aggregate into economic change. More power to the Hungry and Foolish Ind-ennials.

I'd like to draw your attention to a column series we are starting on the need for mindfulness in business. Leadership researchers and practitioners have been telling us for some time now - 2,500 years if you count Buddha - that the first step in making a leader is: knowing thyself.* Mindfulness is not some esoteric concept that needs rigorous practice in the Himalayas. It is just being aware of and living every moment of our lives. As trainer Santhosh Babu says, "All you need to know yourself is to Be." Babu will continue his column online at www.businesstoday.in/buddhaintheboardroom. I'd recommend you follow @BT_India on Twitter to be alerted of his columns (and other content at Business Today). All the best in your quest to experience awareness.

(*The paragraph has been corrected for the number of years ago Buddha lived. An earlier version said 5,000 years ago.)