Being a startup in India has never been easy, especially if it harbors ambitions of doing business abroad. With Make in India, hopefully Indian startups will get an edge. The new government’s faith in India’s budding IT industry became apparent when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Make in India initiative. “I tell the world, make in India. Sell anywhere but manufacture here. We have the skill and talent for it,” Modi said in his first Independence Day Speech as Prime Minister.It is a bold step, which in a way, challenges our neighboring country China, which has always boasted of being a low-cost technology provider. The initiative is a grand opportunity for startup companies to fuel their ambitions and reach out to global consumers. Notion Ink, a company that designs tablet computers, is one such organization.“It is saddening to see India as a services country. The whole world has spent the last two decades in teaching China how to make products and now they are experts in every field, and have done large-scale, complex product development,” says Rohan Shravan, CEO and founder, Notion Ink Design Labs, while talking about the importance of the initiative.The challenges Notion Ink faces are no different from other startups. What is different, though, is its perseverance and grit. This medium-sized startup feels that failures have made it humble. With two of its tablets, Cain and Adam, coming in the era of phablets, the company realized that making a mark wouldn’t be easy. “With the Adam tablet, we started a very different kind of product development, which now people call crowd sourced. Here we tasted commercial success,” says Shravan.“We faced a few challenges with Adam I, but we rectified ourselves and made sure that we do not face the same challenges again. Cain is doing phenomenally well in the market and we are getting good reviews,” he adds. The company’s vision is to make devices that can make real computing accessible and mobile. “A product firm has a lot of challenges. Right from selecting the material to designing aesthetics, and pulling together the right software. But at Notion Ink, we remain optimistic and believe that if a design can inspire the user, he’ll be far more innovative and creative in whatever he does,” says Shravan.Being a startup in India has never been easy, especially if it harbors ambitions of doing business outside India. It is difficult to gather funds and convince leaders to get engaged. Through Make in India, hopefully these issues will get addressed.“India has a habit of skipping things. We skipped the landline phone revolution, we skipped manufacturing and jumped on to services, we were also trying to skip roadways development and jump directly to flying cars! This way, knowledge will never develop,” says Shravan. Related content feature Key IT initiatives reshape the CIO agenda While cloud, cybersecurity, and analytics remain top of mind for IT leaders, a shift toward delivering business value is altering how CIOs approach key priorities, pushing transformative projects to the next phase. By Mary Pratt May 30, 2023 10 mins IT Strategy IT Leadership opinion Managing IT right starts with rightsizing IT for value While there are few universals when it comes to saying unambiguously what ‘managing IT right’ looks like, knowing how to navigate the limitless possibilities of IT is surely one. By Thornton May May 30, 2023 6 mins Digital Transformation IT Strategy IT Leadership brandpost Designing the campus of the future starts with high-quality 10Gbps connectivity By Huawei May 30, 2023 4 mins Network Architect Networking Devices Networking feature Red Hat embraces hybrid cloud for internal IT The maker of OpenShift has leveraged its own open container offering to migrate business-critical apps to AWS as part of a strategy to move beyond facilitating hybrid cloud for others and capitalize on the model for itself. By Paula Rooney May 29, 2023 5 mins CIO 100 Technology Industry Hybrid Cloud Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe