Comments on: Herd mentality and Indian startups

By: pranav

pranav — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:23:42 +0000

@venkat,

thanks for sharing your experience @ iim-b.

put it pretty well..

By: Aditya Gholap

Aditya Gholap — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:55:43 +0000

Interesting thoughts and ideas. But i think this is true in most industries where barriers to entry are low and replicability is easy (case in point – the web 2.0 space) so this is nothing unexpected. It does indicate that Indian startups take the easy way out but i think this happens everywhere else. You are mostly right though. Indian entrepreneurs need to break the mould. Industries consolidate. Everyone will not win.

Look at the BPO boom as well.

Indian companies tend quite easily towards services as well. Its the easy way out.

So very few companies in the startup space as a result are making great products. Its a combination of education + the eco system + the consumer that is to blame.

One Indian company i particularly like (and have mentioned this over and over again) is DeskAway (http://www.deskaway.com)

They have a unique product that is building at quite a great pace. You’ll have also featured it. MVP has come on their board. They’ve presented at Proto, won international accolades via webworkerdaily, thinkvitamin and others – (http://www.cheapest-service.com/blog/2008/09/08/100-must-have-web-tools-for-telecommuters-best-of-the-best/). I think what works for them is an international outlook. I think Indian product startups need to look at capturing global markets. That will really lead to a stress on quality, individuality, and an enhanced reputation and benchmark for the Indian Start – up space..

what do you think?

By: Venkat

Venkat — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:32:51 +0000

Correction to my comment above – The co-founder of travel guru mentioned above is Ganesh Rengaswamy

By: Venkat

Venkat — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 07:44:44 +0000

Attended the startup saturday event at IIM-B yesterday. There was a talk by Rakesh Godhwani (co-founder of Travelguru) and now a VC. He briefly touched upon herd mentality not only amongst entrepreneurs but also amongst VC’s. Though it might be good for the entire space in general, it could also mean, startup’s are not doing enough homework on the competition analysis front – a key point raised by Rakesh. On the other hand, as one of the posts above mention, it could be a case of delayed launch. Here I find another gentleman, Vishy Poosala’s (founder geopepper.com) insight relevant wherein he urges start-ups to quickly launch prototypes of their products…might just help you get that first mover advantage in the herd…..then the onus of differentiating is on the follower!

By: Kris

Kris — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:01:39 +0000

In some rare cases the new players are better than the pioneers, one of them is definitely Admanya.com – there was only Mouthshut which ruled for 6 to 7 years and now there is Admanya!

By: Rashmi

Rashmi — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:51:57 +0000

Hi Friends,

As for my i saw that site this is a very nice idea. Definitely a great step towards introducing the Desi tinch on Net.

Regards
Rashmi

http://www.indiatourismhub.com

By: Bangalore Caterers

Bangalore Caterers — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:03:48 +0000

Pls Visit Bangalore Catering Services and Post Your ReviewsBangalore Caterers Thank YOu

By: Rabi Gupta

Rabi Gupta — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:00:24 +0000

Herd mentality is a global term but it’s more of a phenomena in India, specially in Indian web market. It would not be wrong to say that both Indian web startups as well as users are amateur at this point of time and they are undergoing a transition phase. So it’s not just the startups which dont care a damn about the original idea, but even the net users don’t give the right attention to originality. Moreover from users perspective it gives them a better option to pick from (whichever they think is better!) if they have lot of options. So I would say competitors try and compete in an already blooded red ocean (source: Blue ocean Strategy) and try to snatch the share from others rather than creating a blue ocean of their own. I have seen this mentality even among the investors, they feel it safe to put their money behind an already working idea rather than trying for a new one.
What say!!

By: Nishi

Nishi — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:52:03 +0000

It is funny how most of the people posting comments here are trying to market their own websites. Ironic!! Here you are talking about herd mentality, and a few more want to join the herd:)

By: merock

merock — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:37:58 +0000

I would say the so called “Herd mentality” in indian market is good for end customer. With competition in market/domain come better offerings and fair prices to the customer. Customer feels like king with so many offerings infront of him to choose from For example:
Assume there is only one cloth retailer in your locality. Everytime you visit the shop, the owner will ask you to not negotiate on prices, also ask you to put the tried clothes back on the shelf properly folded and wont allow unlimited trails. But if there are around 20 shops, the same retailer will give u a different treatment- discounts, salesperson, coffee, tea offering…..hehehehe and unlimited cloth trials.

So I would say as end customer, this availability of multiplayers is great for us asevery player will try to offer better service. Then only it becomes the game of all woeing the customer

By: jeet singh

jeet singh — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:37:32 +0000

Challenging role in a startup:
———————————-
We are running http://www.samfra.com – a local search engine.

We are going to launch a travel portal with great innovations.
We already have some highly experienced people in the team.
But, we need experienced people from travel, web marketing and technical
domains.

If interested or you know someone who can be suitable, send me a mail at
jeet232(at)gmail(dot)com
Even if you are not in above categories, still we can discuss things.

Thanks

Jeet Singh
9342141022

By: webmaster

webmaster — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:15:08 +0000

Original innovation is good. Unfortunately it is the innovator who suffers as

a). his blood is drained out by the time he can convince a Angel Investor or a VC (we are recipient of a Gold Medal from Lockheed Martin for the best Innovation from India). Investors discount this – “we want gold” – you keep your “medal” and come back to us after you gain initial momentum. Boils down to chicken & egg most of the times.

b). Introducing a new innovation to the market without funding or a “God Father” takes a lot of time

c). The ‘Clone’ with the VC money reaps the benefit.

By: harry

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By: prashant

prashant — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:04:17 +0000

I disagree with you on the herd mentality. Before google there were companies into search engine(like AOL). Stil google made it to the top. Same with Infosys they were not the pioneer in outsourcing. Its the same in India, entrepreneurs have started out. We need to give them some time to evolve and prove.
“Race is won not by the fastest but by the most consistent.”

By: Sunil D.

Sunil D. — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:01:27 +0000

Surprising that you haven’t mentioned the web 2.0 jobsites – jobsidi.com, bixee.com, gladoo.com, recruit.net

By: Amit

Amit — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:58:47 +0000

Another video sharing website you may want to add to your list, which joined the herd is layfile.com

By: bobby

bobby — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:06:48 +0000

I don’t accept with this post. You cannot call the followers a “HERD” because there are different ways each team approaches a perticular problem in the same domain. If people start accepting to what you say, there would be exaclty 1 website for everything…only google for search. Only Yahoo for email and Microsoft for browsers..etc. So domains and ideas may be just few, but the way each one approaches or implements the same idea is different. Thats where things get interesting.

By: Raka

Raka — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:41:18 +0000

Another startup MastiDating

By: m. kaur

m. kaur — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:57:11 +0000

Interesting read. Herd mentality isn’t limited to India or Indian businesses, though. Having worked in Japan for quite some time, I know for a fact that it’s even more wild over there–fads go in and out within weeks!

You can find alot of information on Indian startups at India Web 2.0 News, including business, internet and job news… it’s a pretty good site for Indian business news.

By: DD

DD — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:03:56 +0000

Besides, yes i agree of the Herd Mentality phenomenon, but it is definitely not restricted to India alone. Being in Valley, you for sure know that there was/is a literal bloodbath amongst 100s of similar Web 2.0 apps. Same is true for Japan and Korea as well.
I think thats just a general phenomenon going on for centuries and not necessarily anything wrong with that either. Some of the successful Apps/companies that we see today are all who basically did something just better than what was existing, eg Google, Myspace, Facebook, yahoo, Amazon.
So there are enough inspiring cases to be a part of herd and try and make it big at some point (though i agree the hit ratio is worse than Hollywood)

-DD