Building The Next Esoteric Tech Valley

It is a proud moment for everyone in Hyderabad, as T-Hub opens tomorrow as the emerging force behind startups. It aims to create an even more vibrant ecosystem here, by creating these collaborative spaces of discourse and learning.

As we anticipate growth in startups, with eyes wide open, we are facing more challenges than just building the ecosystem. Adoption cycles are excruciatingly longer. Not enough angel investors taking risks. Not enough skilled techies to design and build your products.

What does it mean to be the city of Startups & Innovation?

Good infrastructure

What differentiates Hyderabad from Pune right now is a high speed internet connection that is available at an affordable price, with little or no downtime. But still, every startup is forced to arrange for Power Backups, meaning, significant resources are allocated in keeping their computers up while they should be focusing on building products.

Large and skilled workforce

As Paul Graham says, nerds are the biggest part of building a silicon valley. As much as we see India as the IT Service capital of the world, our quality of design, development are yet to meet the global standards. If a startup can find a good designer and developer very easily, it multiplies their chances of success. Our higher educational institutions are much to blame here.

Angel investors with higher risk tolerance

Angel Investors play a crucial part in startup cycle, by betting on a large number of ideas. When the risk tolerance is very low, the chances of somebody trying and failing are low as well. That reduces the possibility of a billion dollar startup. Most of the startups that have succeeded so far are the ones, bootstrapped by themselves or through friends and family. We need more accelerators and incubators to increase those odds.

Big addressable market

What we have going on, is a big addressable market and a large pool of early adopters willing to try new products. But still, the adoption cycles are excruciatingly slow, compared to silicon valley. It takes much larger effort to convince everybody across the whole economic spectrum, given the huge variance.

Ecosystem

Compared to Bangalore, Hyderabad has only, small groups of like minded people, willing to come together, discuss and learn, just out of passion. Startups & Entrepreneurs have been lucky in that aspect. Not so much in terms of developer, design or any other interest based communities.

Disposable Income

A city with a booming middle class, and a lot of disposable income can do wonders to all the new products and services. Hyderabad has been fortunate in terms of a thriving middle class. But that comes with a catch. Disposable income is spent on primary needs first. If your startup does not fit into the primary needs, then you are competing with other startups for that same pie. Lets all hope that we all have more income to spend.

Cultural Shift

Hyderabad having been home to a lot of film, pharmaceutical and real estate entrepreneurs, has always been open to new ventures and ideas. But that has been restricted to the privileged few and well off. Only when there is a cultural shift, even a college graduate can come out and dream to pursue his ideas, with little or no resources.

Lets all welcome T-Hub as the harbinger of all good things to happen in Hyderabad. Kudos to all the passionate and good people spearheading the effort.

Notes

1. Paul Graham’s How To Be Silicon Valley and Cities and Ambition
2. T-Hub Official Website
3. Image Credit: ShutterStock

About The Author

Srinivas Aki in his current role as the CEO & Founder of The Egghead Creative, works with entrepreneurs and startups advising them on technology, products and strategy. As an Indian born and US bred technologist, he brings a formidable outlook to software driven endeavors. If you are an early stage startup looking for advise, reach out to the author at srini@eggheadcreative.com

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