Many well-educated young Indians are returning to their home country or moving to the cities because they believe in the enormous economic potential of their country. In Hyderabad, for example, a kind of Silicon Valley is currently emerging.
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00:00 All right guys, very good morning. Welcome to our design sprint.
00:05 A team meeting at Hala Mobility, a startup based in southern India's Hyderabad.
00:11 Srikanth Reddy runs the company. The 29-year-old studied in Italy and Spain, where he did his doctorate, but then he made a conscious decision to return to India.
00:21 I had a very lucrative job, in fact. It's a high-paying job that I can be happily settled down there.
00:29 What drove me here to move is the impact that I can create with the experience that I have and the bigger problem that I can solve.
00:37 His three-year-old company focuses on sustainable mobility.
00:42 Hey Varad, good morning.
00:44 He already rents out more than two and a half thousand electric scooters to customers such as delivery people.
00:51 He chose India as a location primarily because of its huge customer potential.
00:57 Hardly any economy is growing as quickly as India's. In just four years, it's expected to overtake Germany and Japan.
01:04 The growth is evident in the many young companies, including Srikanth Reddy's.
01:09 When we started in the year 2020, November, we started with mere two vehicles.
01:14 And that same year we scaled it up to 20 and then in the next five years we were 100, 200 vehicles.
01:18 From there we scaled the journey to a thousand odd numbers where we picked up our first round of investment last year.
01:23 With the investment we grew 400% times.
01:26 A million dollars has been invested so far and Reddy has nearly 80 employees.
01:32 Many of them left small villages to find opportunities in the big cities, such as mechanic Shravan Kumar.
01:39 I'm learning a lot here. I'm used to being told to do things from my village.
01:47 But here it's explained to me. I see many development opportunities and have already been taught a lot.
01:54 All of this would have been impossible in my village.
01:56 The difference between the city and my hometown is really huge.
02:00 A difference he wants to show his boss.
02:03 Together they drive to Saidapur, a village of 4,000 outside of Hyderabad.
02:09 Kumar didn't actually want to leave his family and village, but taking his new job meant he had no choice.
02:19 Before I went to Hyderabad to become a mechanic, I wanted to start my own business here in my village.
02:25 I had an idea to open a small workshop, but none of that worked out because no one really took me seriously.
02:32 Everything was constantly questioned. In the end I lost my self-confidence.
02:37 In the countryside there are few signs of the recent years technological progress.
02:44 Shravan's family makes a living from farming and has to get by on the equivalent of about 150 euros per month.
02:51 His mother complains that Indian politics hasn't really taken care of villages like hers.
02:56 Look, nothing has changed here in the village. Everything is as it was before.
03:03 The government promised that things would improve. Nothing has changed.
03:07 Even educated people can't find a well-paid job here. That's why my son moved to the city.
03:13 It's a life that entrepreneur Reddy otherwise has little contact with.
03:17 But two-thirds of all Indians have this kind of lifestyle.
03:21 In modern India they're now urgently seeking opportunities for the rural population.
03:26 One place where these solutions will be developed is the T-Hub center in Hyderabad.
03:31 It's a state-funded project that advises and supports startups like Reddy's from the very beginning.
03:37 Hello sir. Good morning.
03:41 Anthony Anish, one of the T-Hub's managing directors, is happy to see young entrepreneurs now looking for opportunities for people in rural areas and villages.
03:50 Agritech is moving out there. Sustainability is moving out there.
03:53 So there are startups who are actually solving for rural problems, for non-metro problems, for tier-3, tier-4, rural, semi-urban, peri-urban problems.
04:05 So I think yes, there are a lot of startups who are solving for those problems as well and they're taking these solutions out into the masses.
04:11 For groundbreaking ideas and technologies such as AI, they've set lofty goals.
04:17 While there are currently just over 300 startups in the Innovation Center, the number is set to rise to more than 20,000 in the next five years.
04:26 Entrepreneurs like Reddy see their country as the economic superpower of the future.
04:33 It's not too far to get the Silicon Valley of India's tag for Hyderabad or even better tag or to have a unique recognition for ourselves than comparing to anyone else.
04:43 And Hyderabad is in that range and India will be in that place where it's going to be a center point of innovation.
04:50 India is growing in population, economic power and self-confidence.
04:57 confidence.
04:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]