Faster growing economy a magnet for innovators

Snigdha Poonam a Delhi-based journalist, explores the hopes and fears of rising and the new generation of young Indians are shaping the world’s largest democracy, where 40 per cent of the population is under age of 35 and a million people turn 18 every month. As this population grows up, it will definitely reshape India and the change the world politically, economically and environmentally. Indian young women are just pushing their elders all along the way. Education is really realising their true potential.

Snigdha’s brilliant drive into the Psyche of India’s youth charting the gap between prodigal illusion and inept reality. In her collection of profiles, focuses on small-town youth, Vinay Singhal, who starts one of the world’s largest content farms, now second to BuzzFeed and a young milkman who runs his own centre of motivational guidance. 

Over 600 million Indians are under 25 and this generation lives between the extremes more connected and global than ever. They have influenced their elders by having the life goals of American teenagers although they were raised with the cultural values of their grandparents.

These dreamers are the face of a new India. Snigdha, follows these young fortune-hunters including aspiring Bollywood stars and clickbait gurus, the Cow Protection Army hoodlums and India’s first female student union president – all untied by the vision that they were born for bigger and better things in life. Dreamers want to live life to the full but they want to achieve their boundless ambition and extraordinary imagination to create opportunities in the unlikeliest of spaces.

America’s Silicon Valley has always been a hub for some of the brightest and the best Indian immigrants to start businesses. In America more than half of the start-ups founded in Silicon Valley since 2005 began by immigration and  1 in 3 started by an Indian according to research from the Kauffman Foundation. Now, in reversal, more people from the US are moving to the sub-continent with their ideas.

Valerie Wagoner a Stanford University-educated former employee at eBay left  10 years ago and is now at the helm of her own mobile marketing company Zip Dial. She chose India above China because it is an English-speaking market.  “there is such a huge opportunity here to innovate and build businesses which are unique to this market” Valerie explains. She developed technology which allows people to dial a number to enter a contest or prize draw.  They then hang up and get a text from the advertisers which saves them the cost of a call.

Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley, has a high penetration of tech companies and is home to some of the big global software giants like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The high concentration of Indian Engineering graduates and a start-up culture can show the world in the near future. Microsoft moved its Research offices 12 years ago and said: “ I believe there’s the same potential for intelligence across the globe. So if you have a sixth of the world’s population you have a sixth of the world’s brainpower here too.”

 Dreamers- How Young Indians are Changing the World  by Snigdha Poonam, Hurst  £14.99