Tales of Entrepreneurship: A Peek into Tomorrow's Potential Winners

Readers of Forbes India sometimes wonder how we decide on our cover stories, and why someone or something is, or is not, on the cover.  Very often we are asked: Why is this guy, with a turnover of a mere Rs xxx crore, on the cover when there are bigger players out there? The answer is, of course, simple: We are not influenced purely by size. We also look at potential, innovativeness and the odds against which an entrepreneur registers his success story. Our cover picture this time is about an entrepreneur who is scaling up his fashion brands retailing business. He is not the biggest of them all, but he certainly has an interesting story to tell. As are the stories of his other 13 compatriots who grace our Hidden Gems Special.

In terms of our hierarchy of priorities, our first and overwhelming goal is to play cheerleader to Indian entrepreneurial capitalism. We consistently and consciously look for entrepreneurs who appear to have latched on to a great business idea and seem to be making it work. When we find one, we try and tell you the story as inspirationally as possible. Next, we also look for smart businesspeople, who may or may not be owners, but act like owners and behave entrepreneurially. Third, our philosophy is that the business of government is governance, not business. Governments must enable, companies must compete and serve the market and consumers. Those who fail must be shown the humane way out. So, even when we write about policy and government, we work with this philosophy in mind.

It is not my purpose to explain every decision we take, but just to define our broad approach. Take the last issue—our Independence Day special—and this one. In the August 23 issue (which hit the stands well before I-Day) our focus was on the issue of freedom—both for business and individuals. The specialists who wrote for us were also thinkers who had policy prescriptions in mind.

Despite the lack of business freedom, we are happy to report in this issue that Indian entrepreneurship is alive and kicking. Our 14 Hidden Gems are all companies that have tasted success by identifying spaces in the market for them to operate profitably in, and—this is the important part—they are yet to tap the market for public capital. That could happen soon in some cases. Our Hidden Gems Special gives you an early peek into tomorrow’s potential winners, though some may fail to make the grade. But that’s what the market is for: To separate the best from the rest.

We hope you have as much fun reading about these Hidden Gems as we had in putting them together with the help of our knowledge partner, Venture Intelligence.

Best,
R Jagannathan
Editor-in-Chief, Forbes India
Email: r.jagannathan@network18online.com
Twitter id: @TheJaggi