Indians have been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.
The country’s workforce is the keenest on pursuing entrepreneurship, a survey by global recruitment firm Randstad has noted. Of the 400 workers surveyed in India, 56% considered quitting their jobs to start their own business. This is the highest globally, Randstad said in its 2017 annual Workmonitor Survey, held across 33 countries. The results of the survey were published on August 9.
The survey found that entrepreneurship was most favoured among Indians, with 83% of the employees surveyed suggesting that they would “love to be an entrepreneur” – much higher than the global average of 53%. This propensity is highest among those aged 25-34, with 72% of the respondents in this age group favouring it. Employees aged 45-54 seemed less enthusiastic about start-ups in general.
That is mostly because India’s young workforce feels the atmosphere is favourable for start-ups. Some cited the Narendra Modi government’s initiatives such as the 2016 announcement of a Rs10,000 crore fund for the sector. India’s evolving start-up ecosystem, with its unicorns – private start-ups worth more than $1 billion such as Flipkart, Ola, and Paytm – have attracted a lot of attention in recent years.
Besides, a fast-growing economy and a digitally connected population have helped spur investor interest in Asia’s third-largest economy. Large global players like Tiger Global, Temasek, and Alibaba Group have shown a keen interest in the country.
Yet, start-ups have not had it all easy in India.
Those surveyed by Randstad acknowledged that the risks that starting a business entail are big. That is a genuine concern as start-ups’ success rate remains abysmally low in the country – close to 90% of them fail in less than five years of founding, a recent survey by IBM noted. The survey cited a lack of innovation and an ongoing funding crunch as reasons for this.
This article first appeared on Quartz.