Entrepreneurship in India. What India’s evolving business landscape means for its partners

Russia is actively developing cooperation with fast-growing economies of Asian countries. India is the locomotive of the global economy for the coming decades. The SKOLKOVO School of Economics’ Indian Studies Lab regularly prepares materials on India that help Russian entrepreneurs work in the Indian direction. This study is a response to the Russian audience’s request for more detailed information about what Indian entrepreneurs are like and how to interact with them more effectively. It analyzes the evolution of Indian approaches to entrepreneurship from Arthashastra (literally, «science of finance», «science of wealth», an ancient Indian political and economic treatise) to the high-tech unicorns of today. 

In the short period since the economic reforms of the 1990s, deep-rooted entrepreneurial traditions in India have contributed to the emergence of a new dynamic generation of entrepreneurs. The study takes a detailed look at factors such as India's digital transformation, the emergence of the Indian diaspora, and the Modi government's youth-oriented policies that have contributed to the country's entrepreneurial boom and the «democratization« of entrepreneurship, which has gone beyond traditional family conglomerates and closed business communities to encompass a significant portion of Indian society. 

An important part of the study was a survey conducted among Russian and Indian entrepreneurs on their mutual perceptions, motivation for entrepreneurship, business culture, what obstacles they see in the way of cooperation, and what factors they consider conducive to the development of entrepreneurship in their countries.