'Startups should think long-term'

Nikesh Arora, president and COO of the 8.63-trillion yen ($72-billion) SoftBank Group Corp, has said that startups should come up with innovative product ideas and look at long-term objectives.

Speaking at an interactive session organised as part of the Nasscom Product Conclave, 2015, on Tuesday, he said the idea of the startups is very important in its durability.

“Globally, all big companies began their journey as small product companies. They never invested in marketing their product. You can’t have a bad product and market it. It is not a sprint but a marathon,” he said.

Arora said big companies bloomed after finding solutions to simple problems, and later added offerings one by one. “Twitter came up with small messaging. Then they found traction with a large user base. It expanded phenomenally and they later added other services and became a bigger company,” he said.

He said since the country has been facing large-scale problems, there are lots of opportunities for startup companies to come up with customer-centric products. “Culturally, we are brought up in a resource-constrained fashion. So we have learned the art of recycling. But the resource constraints also pave the way for innovation and here we have an edge,” he said.

The SoftBank Group Corp president & COO said startups need funding so that they can scale up faster and bring in change. “As an investor I am looking for value for money. I am focused on that. In the initial stages we have to take risk. Once the company achieves scale, we de-risk ourselves,” he said.

When asked whether SoftBank’s investments are focused on B2C companies, he said even though they are replicating tested ideas, there is scale and business in that. “I can see risk involved in B2C companies. But once they reach a scale they will make more profit. But here product companies will have to go through long cycles,” he said.