India has market to fight global giants, says SoftBank CEO
NEW DELHI: “The moment you start prioritising funding, you lose focus. Solve a problem. Money will find you.” This was the message given by Nikesh Arora, chief operating officer of SoftBank.
Setting an example for the upcoming start-ups, Arora’s message hinted at the urgent need for them to be born out of sheer idea of solving a problem and not on the hardship of the hunt for funds.
“2016 is going to the year of execution and entrepreneurs should not think about money. Money will come to you. I love that I should go to an entrepreneur and tell him that take my money and build your product than the other way round,” Arora said.
Adding that it was the opportunity in India which made his company SoftBank invest in creating alternate energy sources — solar — he said, “India has huge opportunity to leapfrog the exiting energy and is blessed with lot of sunlight. Tremendous reshaping of solar sector in India is happening and the government is going a great job in this field.”
Not just this, apart from solar areas which excite Softbank and might see some investments coming in included education and artificial intelligence. “One of the areas where I haven’t seen a solution at scale is education. Today with so much technology application, we can reshape education…We are very interested in artificial intelligence,” he said.
Arora also gave some key takeaways which an entrepreneur should add to his to do and not to do list. These included not to be “romanticising” the past, be “ruthless about time”, take the benefit of “uptick in smartphones”, “think about the enduser” and building customer satisfaction.