How to Start a Startup in India – This is a big question in every aspiring entrepreneur’s mind.
How to start, where to start – this is still a black box in India. In this article, I will try to give you a roadmap to start a startup in India. Let’s go ahead.
India is emerging as one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing startup ecosystems in the world. With advancements in technology, AI, and social media, starting up is much more accessible than before. India has a huge number of opportunities and today, more and more people want to own their own business. You can start your own startup literally with a phone in your hand, passion in your heart, and an idea in your mind.
Through this article, we will guide you through the process of starting a startup in India, from coming up with an idea to validation to securing funding and much more.
How to Start a Startup in India: A Step-by-Step Guide
1. Find a Business Idea
The very first step to starting a startup in India or anywhere in the world is to have an idea. There are different ways to get a startup idea that actually sells. Here is a tip , rather than trying to look for an idea – look for problems and build a solution around it. An idea that solves a real problem has a high chance of succeeding.
Before Finalising the idea make sure you have done a proper market research. A good business idea has following traits –
- Strong Founder-Market fit – You should have good experience or deep knowledge of the problem you are trying to solve. Deeper is your expertise in that area or industry, higher are your chances of success. To start a startup in India, If you do not have expertise in the area, make sure to first spend time and gain good knowledge, it will help you take better decisions and solve the problem better.
- Uniqueness/Competitive Advantage – You should do deep competition analysis of your idea and study the existing players, their offerings, pricing , strategy so that you are well aware of the gaps. You should have a clear idea on how you are better than your competitors and if a user is given the option to choose between yours’ and your competitor’s product/service, they will choose yours.
- Market Size – Do deep analysis on the market to understand how big is the market. It is definitely recommended to start small, do not try to capture a big market in one go – it is not possible and you end up wasting time, money and resources. Having said that, you should know that going ahead how big the market is going to be.
Do not get into trap of getting perfect idea from Day 1, ideas are made perfect over time by taking feedback from customers and continuously iterating till you hit the right market and right product
2. Validate your Idea
Once founders have an idea, many founders jump into making really big product plans that would take them months and years to execute. Before you invest money or plan to raise investment from external investors, you need to validate your idea from real users. You need to do lots of User Interviews, build Minimum Viable Product and take it to the users, take their feedback and keep iterating till you get the right product.
After validating your idea, you can choose to raise external funds, raise from friends or family, or put in your own money. There are different stages of funding – Bootstrap, Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, B, C till IPO. If you choose to raise external funds from an investor, you can try different ways to get an angel investor. You can go ahead and put in your own money as well to gain more traction and then go for funding.
3. Create a Business Plan
Whether your plan to raise funding or put in your own money, it is very important to have a roadmap for your business for the next few months to a year at least. A business plan gives a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how much time, cost and resources it will take you to reach that goal. It will help you stay focused and you will achieve your goals faster. Your business plan should cover the following areas:
- Vision & Mission: What do you want to achieve, and how will you make it happen?
- Revenue Model: How do you plan to make the money? You might have the best product in the world but if no one wants to pay for it, you won’t be able to make a sustainable business. It takes some time to figure out the right revenue model but to start off with. you should know why your customers will pay and how much they can pay.
- Financial Projections: You might be new to making financial projections and it might be overwhelming for you but you can start making it as simple as possible. Decide the timeline for which you are making the projections. It can be 1 year, 2 years or 5 years. Start with 1 year. You need to write down all the expenses – Infrastructure, Employees and their salaries, Tools, Marketing Cost, Branding Cost, Delivery Cost, Laptop cost, etc along with targeted revenue. The attributes might vary depending on the business but basics remain the same
4. Register Your Startup
Whether you want to integrate a payment system or being a new investor onboard – you need to have your company registered. You can hire a CA or CS to register your company for you. For startups in India, registering your business is a very important legal step. You can register as a Private Limited Company, Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), Sole Proprietorship, depending on the scale and nature of your business. There are other registration types as well but the ones mentioned above are the most common ones.
5. Set Up Your Team
You can start as a solo founder and hire people in your team to do execution based on your strategy or you can look for a co-founder. You can start looking for a co-founder the moment you know you want to start a startup and make sure you both share the same passion for the problem you are trying to solve. Irrespective of whether you have a co-founder or not, depending on the stage of the company, you need to start building a team. Depending on the amount of work, type of skills needed – you can either hire interns or full-time folks in your startup and grow your business.
Conclusion: The Future of Startups in India
Many founders try to get all the answers on Day 1 about starting a startup in India but the truth is no matter how many articles you read or how many prompts you write about starting up, you will get real insight only after you actually start up. This is the best time for you to startup. Starting up is the most difficult but most rewarding journey in an entrepreneur’s life. You learn everyday, every moment. Having a mentor with you in this journey will make things a little easy for you.
If you have not started yet, start with looking for the right idea for your startup and just keep showing everyday, rest will follow
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