Though startup founders in India start with a bang with their ideas, many of them are not successful in the long run as they develop a sudden lack of passion for their idea.
A sense of uncertainty starts prevailing on them and when a couple of investors start questioning their idea they tend to give up resulting in their idea losing sheen, resulting in failure. This is the major reason that the majority of Indian startup ideas remain unsuccessful and do not see success in the long run barring a few of them.
“It is kind of a tortoise game. One has to be consistent and passionate about their idea,” said V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras, on the sidelines of IInvenTive 2025, the R&D fair at the institute in Chennai.
In a freewheeling interaction with media, Kamakoti said that infrastructure development is an important path towards Viksit Bharat 2047 and more and more civil, construction, and mechanical engineers should contribute towards infrastructure development, and should not change their field and join the technology industry for cushy jobs.
“I see that the majority of civil engineering and mechanical engineering graduates do not join infrastructure companies but rather want to join the IT industry. However as per the current requirement, a large number of civil and mechanical engineers or so are required for infrastructure projects and their contribution is extremely important for infrastructure development,” added Kamakoti.
Kamakoti also vouched for BharatGPT, the indigenous generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform designed for the Indian market and IIT Madras was also contributing towards this model. He said that this was much better than the ChatGPT model. He said that AI will never be able to replace the importance of humans and will not eat into their jobs.
“I recall when computerization was introduced in banks many years back there was stiff opposition to that idea. There were talks that it would eat into banking jobs. But today see what has happened, banking jobs have stayed on and banks have become very productive” remarked Kamakoti.
He said that more and more institutions in India should come forward to be part of R&D fairs such as IInvenTive and the present numbers were just not enough.
Kamakoti said that the number of MoUs for technology transfers at the event was also very low and its numbers should go up significantly. “It is important to put targets and work towards achieving them,” remarked Kamakoti.