[ShabbyDoo]

If social status == money, why is starting a company so frowned-upon by Indian parents? Is it risk aversion on the part of brides' families? Is it considered better to marry your daughter off to, say, an IBMer where both the upsides and downsides are bounded than it is for your daughter to marry someone who is a risk taker? BTW, I'm a white American guy who is simply trying to understand.

[galadriel]

India has no welfare structure, zilch, zero, nada. More than half of population has no sanitation, lot of children are seriously suffering from malnutrition; and good schools are available to few.

If you are an entrepreneur in India, most probably you were lucky enough to be born in 20% of 'richer' family of India, and more often than not, a failure might put you back with the rest 80%. That is too much to bet, especially in a place where start-up in Silicon valley sense is quite difficult to setup.

[abhaga]

2 points. One is that starting a company is only frowned upon by a section of Indian society - the middle class professionals who grew up reading the mantra of job security. Also there are not yet enough stories of people making big by starting their own companies. Once we have few stories, things will change.

Second, a lot of people start companies and do business in India but since those are not in the traditional IT or other VC oriented sectors, they are not heard of that much in these circles. Also not a lot of these companies would be doing the "innovative" stuff but building businesses in well tested markets.

[raghava]

> risk aversion

Yes. In the West, it's your ideas that fail; out in the East, it's you who fail.

One word answer; culture.

[yummyfajitas]

In the US, the result of failure is bankruptcy and burning through your savings, followed by an upper middle class career track. Worst case, you are earning the pay of a 35 year old when you are 40 and your 401k is smaller.

In India, the downside is unbounded. Peru looks wealthy by comparison. 46% of the urban population doesn't have access to improved sanitation. I know a doctor in India who can't afford a water supply with one nine of uptime.

Under the same circumstances, I'm sure you'd also discourage your daughter from marrying an entrepreneur.

Granted, you probably wouldn't be locking her away from the outside world, discouraging her from getting educated (makes her less marriageworthy and harder to control), or selecting her husband for her. But that's a separate issue.