Do you have a terrific startup idea but not enough money to kickstart your journey as an entrepreneur? Well, ace industrialist Ratan Tata said on Tuesday that he is willing to invest more in startups, if his conditions are met.
At an event on Tuesday, the former Tata Group chairman laid out the essential traits he is looking for in a founder. "A startup founder must have a fire in the belly to find an area that is not explored. He or she must find the opportunity to make a difference," he said.
The Tata Group patriarch said he usually evaluates startup founders who approach him on the basis of their seriousness and the clarity of the business.
If your startup idea is unique and touches an area that is not yet explored, it will earn you some brownie points. "The founders should have the courage and tenacity to see it through," he said.
"The years that I was in with Tata Group, I always looked at the startup industry as being exciting but somewhat untouchable because somewhere or the other, there would be a conflict of interest with the Tata Group. After I retired, I was free to invest and I started these small token investments in what I considered to be companies with exciting ideas," he added.
Tata started investing in startups about four years ago. Many of the companies Tata has invested in have turned into unicorns, like e-commerce company Snapdeal, taxi service provider Ola, online furniture retailer Urban Ladder, electronics company Xiaomi, lingerie retailer Zivame, payments services provider PayTM, home services provider UrbanClap and spectacles retailer Lenskart, to name a few.
Recently, the former chairman of Tata Sons announced his plans to invest in Pune-based Tork Motors, a maker of indigenously developed electric vehicles, as the company gears up to launch its much-awaited product T6X, an electric motorcycle engineered to travel at a top speed of 100 kmph on a single charge. He also said that he sees a tremendous opportunity in healthcare and medical treatment.