With half of its population under 25 and the unemployment rate at four-decade high, India faces an uncertain future. The question on young people’s minds: what kinds of jobs will we have? Quartz asked leaders across India’s biggest industries about that one job in their company or field that will be the most crucial in the coming decades.
Several global venture capital (VCs) investors have backed marquee Indian companies since the early 1990s. In the last decade, VCs have played a critical role in building the country’s startup ecosystem—now the third-largest in the world. As per some estimates, VC-backed companies contribute over $50 billion to India’s GDP, and have created more than 1.5 million jobs. In the first eight months of 2019, VC and private equity investments in India touched an all-time high of $36.7 billion.
Karthik Reddy, the managing partner of VC firm Blume Ventures, told Quartz:
As more ‘predictable’ and ‘pattern-able’ tasks become automated, the most valuable roles will increasingly be ones that involve dealing with and helping human intelligence grow, at Blume or elsewhere.
At Blume, we don’t just pick the right entrepreneur to bet on (though, yes, that is important and will remain so in the near future). The most valuable element we offer entrepreneurs is mentorship, coaching, and support that we provide as they work to solve large audacious problems. Founder coaching and mentoring, i.e., helping founders learn and evolve, will remain irreplaceable. This is increasingly our edge over other VC firms, many even considerably larger than us in size.
Recognizing this, we have expanded the number of people at Blume who support and help entrepreneurs learn. Our investment teams, which traditionally shouldered the mentorship and coaching of entrepreneurs, is enhanced by our platform team. They now collaborate to support our entrepreneurs’ hiring, growth, fundraising, and community (learning from each other).
Karthik Reddy is a Quartz Pro, where he joins other top business thinkers and doers who regularly contribute insights on the news as part of the growing membership community. To read more of his contributions and thoughts, download the Quartz app.