India has always had rich entrepreneurial talent: Yashish Dahiya

Over the past decade, India has attracted attention from around the world because of its thriving start-ups. Over 100 Indian startups have gone from the idea stage to the unicorn mark very rapidly during this period. What is it that is making Indian entrepreneurs stand out from the crowd? What’s the secret mantra behind their success? Recently, Yahish Dahiya, Founder & Group CEO, Policybazaar was invited for a chat on this topic. It was th Rajan Navani, Chairman, CII India@75 Council and Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Jetline Group of Companies. 

As the founder of Policybazaar, an InsurTech that has changed the very meaning of insurance in India in the past 14 years, Dahiya was asked what his dream was for India in the coming years. Dahiya explained that irrespective of what his dream was, India’s growth story is in the offing and is set to take the world by storm. He said, “I think, to be brutally honest, my dream is actually quite irrelevant. I think the reality is India is going to essentially wow the world over the next 25 years in terms of what all India achieves, and in a very nice manner, by being a huge democracy, by being very technically savvy, by not having any hurtful intention towards anybody, but at the same time being deeply strong and confident of itself.”

Talking about one of the biggest defining moments in this new India story, he added, “I think the magical moment for India actually was the UPI movement, because when the UPI and the Adhar actually launched in India, the whole world noticed because it was not just cost efficiency, it was technical supremacy. And it was a thought process which was way ahead of whatever has happened anywhere in the world. And I think taking a leaf out of that now with the Atal digital health mission, with things like your account aggregator framework, I think in all of this, we are putting together a framework for the future which quite honestly, whether you look east or west, has not been as thought through anywhere in the world as we are doing.”

Dahiya also said that he believed that Indians excelling on a global level was hardly new. He explained, “We always had the entrepreneurial talent. There is no doubt about it. You always had Indians doing very well abroad. When the world needed engineers, it was Indians. When the world needed doctors, it was Indians. When the world needed entrepreneurs, when the world needed business leaders. Today, I'm not saying anything new, right. You just look at how many companies in the US, especially in the technical side, are being led by Indians and those Indians are just as, if not more capable of running companies in India and they'd actually be proud of doing that.”

Always unique in his approach, Dahiya mentioned that India wasn’t reliant on one or two Indian entrepreneurs doing well. Instead, he said, India’s time to shine has come and that radiance is bound to make heads turn globally - with or without a player or two. Explaining this, he said, “I think for each of us individually, really, the thing is how much can we be a part of this growing India? Growing India is going to happen, right? And the leading India will happen. I don't think anybody can hold that back.”