What Makes Indian Entrepreneurs Wealthy? Indian entrepreneurs have always understood their clients intuitively better than any data analytics too

By Fakhri Ahmadov

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Entrepreneurship has historical and deep roots in India led by leading names like such as Jamsetji Nasarwanji Tata, Ardeshir Godrej, Govindram Seksaria and many others along with them.

They all had one common trait — master of their own work. This tradition seems to continue in today's India also as we have identified a number of wealthy entrepreneurs who source their richness from expertise in the field and optimized risk-taking capabilities in addition to given huge market which shares the same identity.

It might also be true that Indian entrepreneurs have always understood their clients intuitively better than any data analytics tool. A bright example is yoga-guru Acharya Balkrishna, listed as a Forbes billionaire with 2.5bln USD wealth at his 44 and reportedly never uses computer to manage his affairs, even to analyse his digitally-savvy competitors in any industry.

Doesn't it look like a contrast of what we thought for the business shape of new wealthy? There are a few arguments to support in order to highlight the uniqueness of Indian entrepreneurship.

Competing In Market of Tradition, Not In Traditional Market

Traditional markets are being replaced by digital markets everywhere and almost in all industries, starting from real estate to transportation. Olacabs, OYO Rooms and many other ventures are ambitious in beating old, sometimes seemingly outdated business models.

New generation Indian entrepreneurs have targeted to break rules in local markets by entering with narrow product lines with high efficiency and reaching out more than a billion of consumers. It is not end of the market story, they truly understand the value of not only delivering locally, but grasping value set of the clients in digital way.

Therefore, Indian clones of every global technology giant are in rise locally, which we have observed in Russia and China also. It has been powered mostly by language accessibility of local consumers to benefit like-minded services products and services. It is what we call the opportunity, taking each feeling of the customer seriously both at breadth and depth of the traditions blended with tasty innovation, not the market place.

Less Capital And Connections, More Ideas And Execution…

Entrepreneurship is an old term in its current meaning, but its changing components make it younger though the word itself gets aged.

Looking back history in India, family businesses have set the rules for businesses with high-end connections and typically well-educated and sky-networked of smart people in billion-dollar family businesses were the faces of Indian entrepreneurship.

Now, two-thirds of billionaires are self-made entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries, the youngest Indian billionaire Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, a fintech firm, or another billionaire-jeweller Nirav Modi with his eponymous label and many others may be listed here.

This class of entrepreneurs has two major differences — unwanted mood of not to create the capital rather than not to preserve it; and, using their own capacities as hard-workers, not others as intermediaries.

Both differences are shifts in entrepreneurship journey globally in a way that "business celebrity' status is acquired not gifted at birth.

We observe a series of weaker patterns in rise of immediate, but not well known previously, super-rich due to holding more knowledge assets, more ideas capital, and less physical assets, less financial capital and seemingly it is easier to convert leveraged knowledge assets to personal wealth.

Fakhri Ahmadov

Ahmadoff

Fakhri Ahmadov is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at Ahmadoff wealth advisory firm and founder of Private Wealth Institute. In his role, Fakhri advises ultra high net worth individuals and families on wealth transformation, multigenerational capital structuring and strategic philanthropy.
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