Opportunities great in India today, says 500 Startups founder

Dave Mc Clure is the founder of 500 Startups, an internet seed fund and startup accelerator programme located at Mountain View, CA, United States - the global hot bed of startup activity.

Dave was in India in December 2011 as part of Geeks on a Plane, or GOAP, trip which is an invite-only tour for startups, geeks, investors and entrepreneurs.

Dave and his team on their first tour to India visited Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to see how the Indian startup ecosystem is shaping up. Taslima Khan caught up with him to know more about his India plans.

What brings you to India?
Startups and entrepreneurs. India is certainly interesting for us to be here and I want to build strong connections with India. We are looking to hire people or get into partnerships with angel investors and seed funds to get here.

This is my first trip to India and now I'll be looking at India for the next 20 years. We intend to do at least 5-10 investments every year in Indian startups.

Globally, how many startups you have invested in? How many Indian startups have you invested in?
242 startups. We are kind of more focussed on ecommerce. Education is a new area we are looking at. I am a personal investors in Slideshare here in Delhi and Mygola based out of Bangalore.  

Which are the countries having a booming startup ecosystem?
Well, I think this is happening at a lot of places. We are doing active investments in Brazil as well as bringing companies from Brazil to our accelerator programme. We are making similar efforts in Spanish speaking Latin America, China, East Asia and here in India.

How exciting does the startup ecosystem look here?
Actually, pretty encouraging. There is definitely a lot going on here. We have spend some time in East Asia, China and Japan, we've spent some time in Brazil, Argentina and South America and Europe.  The Indian startup ecosystem is still developing and still pretty new but I would say we are equally as interested in India as we are in Brazil.

What kind of value add do accelerators bring to startups as compared to incubators?
Incubators are more about theory and less labs. Our accelerators emphasis is more on building the company and creating a facilitating environment and giving access to mentors.

How different is 500 Startups from Y-Combinator and Plug and Play accelerator models?
At Y-Combinator they don't house the companies at the office. But 500 startups is both a seed fund and an accelerator and is very much a residential programme structured over 3-4 months. They run much larger batches, upto 60 companies in a batch right now.

500 startups does 25-30 companies in a batch. We get in speakers every week. We try and walk the companies through products and marketing and design reviews. We set up a pitch day or demo day at the end.

Plug and Play is more of a residential programme, less of initial investments. It's more of a rented co-working space than a fund per se. We invest in all our companies that we choose to accelerate unless there are exceptions. Twenty per cent of our investments are in international companies or companies with international connections.

How important is government support for entrepreneurship?
More important than support is just not making it difficult. Instead of having the government being extremely supportive, it is more important that it is not an impediment.   

How many years is India away from the Silicon Valley?
Well, I don't look at it that way, you know. It's not that it is going to be past or equivalent to the Silicon Valley. We look at individual companies, not necessarily the entire region. Opportunities in India are great at this point of time.