Creating infra is govt's job and not start-ups: Masayoshi Son

Softbank CEO says 21st century belongs to India, but needs more investment in infraa

Masayoshi Son, the 58 year-old Japanese business tycoon and the founder and current chief executive officer of SoftBank, on Saturday said that rather than consolidation more start-ups would come up in India. He added that the 21^st century belongs to India and that SoftBank would only scale up its investments in the country.

“I believe there would be more new start-ups popping up in India and not consolidation. Every market is different but I truly think that this is the real big bang beginning for this country and a lot many great things are set to happen,” said Son, who is also CEO of SoftBank Mobile and the current chairman of Sprint Corporation. He added that most of his investments including his putting money in Alibaba have been instinctive and more like ‘falling in love with a girl’.

“We have already invested $2 billion and would be scaling up to $10 billion,” he added. The company plans to invest as much as $20 billion in solar energy in the next few years in the country.

Speaking at the Startup India event in New Delhi organised by the government, Son said that the country needs to do more to improve infrastructure so that the environment is more conducive to the start-up ecosystem.

“As already it is being said, whenever government licenses something it only acts as a bottleneck. It is important to let startups have a free growth. Startup companies cannot take care of infrastructure it is the work of the government. India is lacking in two things one is mobile broadband infra as wireless last mile connectivity is too slow and other is electricity. Fixing infrastructure deficit is important,” Son added.

Son also said that India is going to have a start-up revolution as it has a dynamic young English speaking population and more people are opening start-ups rather than the old ones consolidating. “India is only going to scale up, it is the place to be,” he added.

To Indian start-ups Son said that they should concentrate more on making their companies stronger than think about launching IPOs. He added that he sees an IPO being launched by start-ups in the next five-10 years.

“I think there will be an Indian IPO in the start-up space in five to 10 years. But when you launch an IPO your mind shifts focus to other things related to IPO. For a start-up the first 10 years should be spent to build the company and not rush to other things,” he said. “In the first ten years start-up balance sheet is not important customer collation is. An active user base helps in bringing in profitability and scale up.”

As an investor, Son said that he expects start-ups to conduct business in a smart way. “We need a constant balance and start-ups need to ensure that they invest in a smart way, not in a silly way. Majority of them are doing it in a smart way,” he said. On a lighter note he said that he looks at the eyes of the entrepreneur before making investments, and they sparkle.

He also said that both Indian and Chinese markets are so huge that they give homegrown start-ups a level playing field to take on international ecommerce giants. “In core tech area companies can scale up without changing much but in service and ecommerce sector local culture matters a lot. Lot of adjustments need to be made as a unified model does not help. India and China are few of the countries which has a huge market which gives local companies a level playing field to fight back global players,” he said.

SoftBank, Son said, would investing more in big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and other virtual businesses. “In next 30 years AI will surpass human intelligence in many fronts it would be a million times faster more storage and faster to communicate. New business models should have capabilities to analyse big data. Softbank would bank AI, virtual businesses,” he said.