INDIA is fast emerging as one of the most exciting places for innovation and entrepreneurship. Global accountancy and business intelligence giant KPMG estimate that India's GDP is set to grow from USD 2 trillion to USD 5 trillion by 2025, a huge surge in growth for the national economy.
We take a look at what advice those who have already made huge contributions to India's growth up until now before the digital revolution has even started. We'll then take a look at what new Indian entrepreneurs whose digitally-based businesses are providing solutions for Indian society to continue innovation into the 21st Century.
Mukesh Ambani is the chairman and largest shareholder of Indian oil and gas giant Reliance Industries, a Fortune 500 company and his country's largest by market capitalisation.
Last year, the move of Reliance in 4G phone services with Jio sparked a price war and huge success as they attracted 130 million new customers. His net worth is currently estimated to be just under $40 billion dollars. He's also being tipped as a major competitor to Amazon India and Flipkart in the near future.
Dance to your own music and take some risks in life, because it is often the risk taker who changes the course of history… and contribute to the well-being of millions of lives.
Ambani says we should pick our own path in life, take risks and aim to ultimately help others. He also provides an example of a magnate without a level of seriousness to match - he is rumoured to have a habit of watching at least three Bollywood films per week.
Ratan Tata retired as Tata Group chairman in January this year, but not before making his family company one of the largest in India. He is a very well known figure across the world and especially in the UK, where Tata Group has taken over strong British brands such as Jaguar and Corus.
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Ratan is considered the central figure in the company's huge growth in recent years and Tata Group now has interests in steel, the car market, consultancy, industrial chemicals and consumer goods. He received a Western university education in the US, being educated at Cornell University and Harvard Business School.
A life without excitement, ups and downs is too boring and dull. You need to be a storyteller to your grandchildren, why don’t prepare for that from now? We get this life only once, experience every aspect of it. No one ever have grown without falling once, fail as many times as you can, then only you can succeed. So quit complaining and start exploring.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2000, India's highest honour for civilians, because of his huge impact and leadership in India's business community. The Tata Trusts are respected for having provided many philanthropic donations across India.
Azim Premji is the chairman of Wipro, another of India's biggest companies, which specialises in IT and technology services and consultancy, systems integration and outsourcing. He is also known for his charitable donations to the elementary school system in rural parts of India through the Azim Premji Foundation.
Premji has been recognised across the world for his part in making Wipro one of the fastest growing companies in India.
I was 21 and had spent the last few years at Stanford University Engineering School at California. Many people advised me to take up a nice, cushy job rather than face the challenges of running a hydrogenated oil business. Looking back, I am glad I decided to take charge instead. Essentially leadership begins from within. It is a small voice that tells you where to go when you feel lost. If you believe in that voice, you believe in yourself.
Entrepreneurs have a huge part to play in the explosion of growth in India, and some have already started to make huge impacts on their country by providing solutions through online services as India's population becomes ever more digitally empowered.
India's most valuable startups are almost entirely focused on solutions for the digital age, so what advice do these new entrepreneurs have for those who wish to build a business?
Mukherjee runs Limeroad from Gurgaon, and specialises in online boutique shopping for women – she's has lots of experience in working with e-commerce, having worked at eBay UK as a senior member of staff. Limeroad is now one of the premier online retailers in India.
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Suchi gained both her undergraduate degree and a postgraduate degree in the UK, and was one of the eBay UK executives who broke into the UK market for the company, which is now the second largest globally for the famous site.
You need the fighter gene to succeed, and that requirement I think is gender agnostic. You have to be prepared for failures.
She also worked for Skype and played an important role for the company as a member of the company's executive management team in the UK.
The former Amazon India employee whose story is amazing – he founded Flipkart, one of the ten largest e-commerce companies in India, in 2007 in a tiny apartment in Bangalore with co-founder Binny Bansal.
Both Sachin and Binny studied at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and Sachin initially planned to become a professional gamer before founding Flipkart.
Whatever you do in your personal life will have a huge impact on your business. There is no line in between. You can never switch off.
They began by selling books online, but have now moved to sell clothes and electronics. Sachin and Binny have been known to deliver items to customers' doorsteps themselves, in order to get feedback from their customers directly.
The founder of Ola, which competes against Uber in the Indian market to provide taxi services at low costs. Aggarwal's business now serves more than 100 Indian cities and has more than a quarter of a million customers.
Ola and Aggarwal are locked in a seemingly endless battle for supremacy with Uber in India, and the battle between Aggarwal and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was described as "one of the central dramas in India's flourishing startup scene."
Go out and start up. It is the hardest thing to do. For me it was very hard. When I started, my parents thought I was going to become a travel agent. It was very hard to convince them that I was not.
Aggarwal's final goal is impressively ambitious: says that his ultimate mission is to provide mobility to at least one billion of his country's people. He predicts that car ownership will never reach Western levels and that he can provide an affordable alternative.
This editorial was sponsored by the University of Bristol, to find out more about their economics and business courses take a look at their profile.
