Indian startups must stop tropicalizing Western business models and build indigenous business paradigms
“To tropicalize” — I first heard that expression 21 years ago.
In 2004, I met the CTO of an US multinational HQ-ed in Midwest America which makes durable consumer goods.
He explained to me how his Indian R&D team “tropicalized” US products.
His Indian engineers took the design of US-made products and tweaked them to suit the needs and constraints of the Indian market.
They would either “defeature” (remove excessive features from) overengineered US product or add extra features (like energy efficiency) to adapt the US product to the Indian household context.
These “Indianized” versions of the US products would then be manufactured in India itself, bringing down their cost, so they can be sold at an “Indian” (low) price.
In 2025, Indian startups are practicing a glorified version of “tropicalization”.
They mindlessly import proven B2C business models of US ecommerce startups and relaunch them in India by sprucing them up with some “desi” features.
That’s why I agree with Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal’s criticism of Indian startups wasting their precious talent and VC money to build apps for food delivery, fantasy sports and betting rather than build original AI and deep tech solutions, semiconductors, and robotics.
It’s time for Indian startups to stop tropicalizing Western business models and learn to build indigenous (swadeshi) business models.
In my new book The Frugal Economy, I show how Indian startups can trailblaze original and forward-thinking business paradigms like B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and triple regeneration that will help build Viksit Bharat 2047.
Rather than obsess about scaling up quickly their startups and exit profitably as billionaires, Indian entrepreneurs should “scale out” slowly their ventures to create broader and deeper societal impact.
Rather than rush to deliver ice-cream in less 10 minutes, Indian entrepreneurs should patiently dedicate their energy to “nation-building”, which takes 10–20 years.
I hope India would evolve from a Copycat Startup Nation today to a Swadeshi Startup Nation in 2047.
