India has given some of the best Software Engineers to the world. Not only did we build a few of the largest and best service companies but have also contributed to great product companies like FAANG. We have been great in delivery since ages but lacked in entrepreneurship and innovation.
Well, time is changing and so are we. I truly believe that India has started the journey from being a consumer’s nation to an entrepreneur’s nation. You might be curious to know what made me believe so. My opinion is based on the journey of these two recent developments. The first one is Jio Meet and the second is Elyments. It’s not that India has not produced unicorns before but these two are special.
For folks who don’t know about Jio Meet & Elyments. Jio meet is a video conferencing tool, inspired by Zoom. Elyments is a mobile-based social media platform inspired by FB, Insta, and Whatsapp. You might wonder, we have developed so many applications/ platforms before what makes these two special.
Let’s start with Jio Meet. As I said, it’s inspired by Zoom but using the word “inspired” is sugar-coated, it’s an actual copy-paste of Zoom. Surprisingly, it’s smooth and video/ audio calls are satisfactory. Even the calls with the free account are encrypted. I don’t hold any expertise in video calling technology but as I understand its a complex piece of Engineering. The team must have put great efforts to build this application. Now coming back to the topic why do I see this as a sign of Indian Entrepreneurship.
- We all love technology but an entrepreneur doesn’t. He/She only loves his/her product and it’s time to market. By using the same UI as Zoom, Jio Meet has proved that nothing matters for them but time to market. We have not shown this sort of resilience in the past. It’s a trend that’s just getting started and I trust it would continue. China has used this strategy to make it to the top in manufacturing and seems like it’s going to be the new normal in India.
- One of the great skills for an entrepreneur is to predict market trends and respond to them. Jio has done an excellent partnership with Azure even before the inception of Jio Meet. Their deal with Microsoft is amazing and after using Jio Meet, it all starts to make sense. Jio has acted on the concerns of people about privacy with zoom and built Jio Meet in record time.
We can argue that Jio is part of RIL and hence it’s getting a lot of business acumen from the root. But trust me a product is built by a team not just by the business owner. Team members of Jio meet must be sharing the same entrepreneurship as RIL.
Let’s move to our second hero of the day, Elyments. Fortunately, today is the launch date of the application as well. However, the application is there on play store for quite some time and being downloaded by more than 100K + users. It’s in the nascent stage but looks promising. UI is neat and performant. All looks good but what makes it a good candidate for the trendsetter. Let’s analyze.
- Unlike Jio meet, its not a copy-paste product. It’s truly getting inspired from existing social networks. But we all know the social network is not a money-making business especially when IPO is not an option and everyone is looking at you suspiciously due to privacy concerns. You need to have an entrepreneur in you to launch a social network in this age.
- As we discussed for Jio meet that predicting trends and acting on it is important. A similar case arises for Elyments as well. Indian netizens have complained a lot about the unfair moderation policy of existing social networks. Elyments had predicted this long back and started building the platform. Social Media is a complex ecosystem and the platform that we see now must be hard work of years. Given, the current disagreement of Indian netizens with twitter/ quora its all-time high. This platform seems bound to be successful.
Both of the tools are looking promising but it’s just the starting of their journey. I am sure their journey will create an impact on many others and we will see more and more platforms not just simple apps in the near future. India has a huge population and these platforms will find it difficult to scale without innovation.
Indian brains have innovated a lot in solving technical challenges across the world and in the process have left home as well. One of the reasons they left was a lack of opportunities. With the rise of entrepreneurs in India, opportunities for techies are growing as well. In the near future, the scale of India would be something that the world has not seen yet.
To achieve this, we would need the brains that have left home long back. We can all look for their return. Hoping opportunities will grow and attract them and we would be singing soon, “They’re coming home”.