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The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

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Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#31

Post by kamaal »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #25
kamaal wrote: post #10

Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…

> For a lower middle class person such a failure means, the end of life. Full Stop! Because the debts will drown you till you reach your grave. Debts? Does India not have limited-liability corporations? In rational countries, when your business idea fails, you just throw away the company and start another.

VC's have been around in India since early 90's, may be late 80's.

But businesses are still stuck in the concept of loans. Its like you take a loan to buy your home(Or if I'm right its called mortgage in the US). Businesses pretty much run on loans. So things get super risky, when you factor in failure. Because lenders are expecting principle amount + interests in returns, and you have to often give some thing as a guarantee(for eg: a house, or a plot) which remains with the lender till you return the amount.

I think the trends are changing now. I heard a senior VC talk at a start up conference here in Bangalore. One of the main reasons why entrepreneurship never took off in India was because people had to deal with what-after-failure scenarios, and then it ends there. If the venture is too risky there is hardly any point trying.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#32

Post by udit99 »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #25
kamaal wrote: post #10

Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…

> For a lower middle class person such a failure means, the end of life. Full Stop! Because the debts will drown you till you reach your grave. Debts? Does India not have limited-liability corporations? In rational countries, when your business idea fails, you just throw away the company and start another.

The lower middle class person's venture alluded to in the parent comment is most definitely not going to be anything remotely resembling an LLC. These ventures are more like "Autorickshaw Driving" or "neighborhood grocery shack" than "Instagram for dogs". The business is probably not registered anywhere and the loan is obtained at usurious rates from the neighborhood money lender who has the leverage of muscle-power or contacts to make you pay up. Of course this varies depending on where in the urban/rural lower-middleclass spectrum the entrepreneur falls under, but you get the point.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#33

Post by evincarofautumn »

> Indians just can’t deal with the fact that someone without pedigree can get somewhere in life.

I am not Indian, nor have I spent time in India, so I hope I am right in thinking that this speaks to present growing pains in Indian tech culture. I say growing pains because I think, and hope, that this valuation of pedigree over merit is coming to an end, as it is already at an end in parts of the U.S.

There are, if I may say so, a lot of bad Indian programmers. They’re bad not because they’re Indian, of course, but because they don’t really want to be programmers. It’s a career option. Engineering and business are things you study in school because they’re where money and prestige are. But studying in school and learning are entirely different things.

> The only way your son is ever going to succeed being an entrepreneur is by getting himself an MBA.

I want to believe that this, though it be the present, is not the future of Indian tech entrepreneurship.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#34

Post by sliverstorm »

aortega wrote: post #16
kamaal wrote: post #10

Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…

I agree. It's hard to see the usefullness of a degree in a poor 3rd world country if you wasn't born in one. Nowadays it's possible to be an entrepeneur with somebody elses money, the internet, kickstater and the apple app-store, but all those things are unavailable in india. In a huge 3rd world country, a degree is obviously useful. It's a gov-issued certification, a way to transfer trust from the person having the…

Nowadays it's possible to be an entrepeneur with somebody elses money

A good point, the argument for a college degree becomes quite a lot more compelling then as starting a company is almost right out...

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#35

Post by sliverstorm »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #25
kamaal wrote: post #10

Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…

> For a lower middle class person such a failure means, the end of life. Full Stop! Because the debts will drown you till you reach your grave. Debts? Does India not have limited-liability corporations? In rational countries, when your business idea fails, you just throw away the company and start another.

You're thinking about it from a very structured, Western viewpoint. Not every business is funded by a loan from the bank. Some businesses are funded by the owner's hard work, savings, and maybe a side job. If that business fails, the owner may wind up out of a lot of their savings and in debt simply due to basic life necessities.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#36

Post by kamaal »

udit99 wrote: post #32
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a lower middle class person such a failure means, the end of life. Full Stop! Because the debts will drown you till you reach your grave. Debts? Does India not have limited-liability corporations? In rational countries, when your business idea fails, you just throw away the company and start another.

The lower middle class person's venture alluded to in the parent comment is most definitely not going to be anything remotely resembling an LLC. These ventures are more like "Autorickshaw Driving" or "neighborhood grocery shack" than "Instagram for dogs". The business is probably not registered anywhere and the loan is obtained at usurious rates from the neighborhood money lender who has the leverage of muscle-power…

Though what you are saying is true. I've found the same even with regards to tech start ups.

The situation is no way close to that in the US. In fact even to get anything close to an angel investment you need at least an IIT or an IIM degree. Ask this to anyone trying to bootstrap. Alumni connections are very important, if not that you at least need to be some how networked to a VC. I've had personal experiences with all these.

The best bet for any Indian entrepreneur is either raising money from family(If they are rich enough to fund you) or really bootstrap it as a side project and grow it out.

Either way being an entrepreneur is not for the faint hearted in India. If you are bootstrapping in your side, you will likely work 19 hrs a day and face failure after failure with nearly everyone around finding reasons to make you and your decisions look stupid. At the same time you see guys not even 1/100th the worth climbing the corporate ladder and taking obscene salaries back home just because they happen to be good politicians.

It just all boils down to one word, Persistence. Keep trying. Its not about winning or losing, you just have to show up every day and put up a fight. Eventually you will make it.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#37

Post by auctiontheory »

eksith wrote: post #12
auctiontheory wrote: post #2

At 22, he must have his B.Tech. Pretending to not have gone ... is this some hipster/ironic brand-building shtick?

Your unwillingness to accept reality doesn't make reality any less real. Plenty of talented people who have been fortunate enough to have parents that didn't trample their dreams (and potential) have gone one to become successful in their own right without the aid of a degree.

Obviously my humor is wasted on HN.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#38

Post by sliverstorm »

kamaal wrote: post #31
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a lower middle class person such a failure means, the end of life. Full Stop! Because the debts will drown you till you reach your grave. Debts? Does India not have limited-liability corporations? In rational countries, when your business idea fails, you just throw away the company and start another.

VC's have been around in India since early 90's, may be late 80's. But businesses are still stuck in the concept of loans. Its like you take a loan to buy your home(Or if I'm right its called mortgage in the US). Businesses pretty much run on loans. So things get super risky, when you factor in failure. Because lenders are expecting principle amount + interests in returns, and you have to often give some thing as a g…

You are correct, "mortgage" is the colloquial term used in the USA to refer to home loans.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#39

Post by BWStearns »

r0h1n wrote: post #30

The fact that a formal engineering/MBA education isn't a prerequisite for business success is almost a tautology now, especially among software startups. So there is nothing new here. There are some half-truths though: > For some reasons, Indians just can’t deal with the fact that someone without pedigree can get somewhere in life. - Airtel, India's largest telecom company, was started by Sunil Mittal, armed with jus…

I would hardly say that he is belittling people in the situation you describe. What he is attempting to discourage is the mentality that sticks to the dogmatic cultural position even in the face of a) historical data indicating that academic pedigree isn't a rock-solid predictor of success, and b) local data indicating a higher than average likelihood of success for the individual in question.

This is a specific example of a problem that every culture faces, which is cultural memes that have taken on the form of divine wisdom. Not everyone will be Mittal or Gates, in fact that population is a statistically non-existent one; that doesn't mean that dropping out of college to run a startup is the worst idea for any given person. Any culture shutting off that opportunity regardless of the specific case will cost itself in lost opportunities.

And as an aside on the specific content, I am not Indian, but reading this I couldn't help but remember my Indian friends' impressions of their aunts and uncles admonishing them for doing something insane like getting an advanced economic degree when they could have been a doctor or engineer.

Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree

#40

Post by auctiontheory »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #33

> Indians just can’t deal with the fact that someone without pedigree can get somewhere in life. I am not Indian, nor have I spent time in India, so I hope I am right in thinking that this speaks to present growing pains in Indian tech culture. I say growing pains because I think, and hope, that this valuation of pedigree over merit is coming to an end, as it is already at an end in parts of the U.S. There are, if I…

There are, if I may say so, a lot of bad Indian programmers. They’re bad not because they’re Indian, of course, but because they don’t really want to be programmers.

I observed long ago that (in my Silicon Valley experience) white American programmers were always good programmers, because white Americans only become programmers if they really want to be programmers. The same cannot always be said of other nationalities and ethnic groups.

At least, that's been true until now. The glamorization of programming and the advent of 10-week programming cram courses may change things.

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