An Exploration into Technological Capabilities Among Early Stage Indian Product Based Telecom Start-Ups

Abstract

New technology based start-ups play a very importan t role in developing the economy of a country. In India, telecom sector has seen unprecedented growth over the last decade and this has led to emergence of several telecom related start-ups. How ever, product based B2B start-ups are rare and existing ones have to undergo several challenges in commercializing. Surprisingly not much research work has been undertaken in identifying capabilitie s among early stage start-ups although the early phase represents a very crucial phase for product b ased firms and has been known to determine the success or failure for start-ups. Present study exp lores the technological capabilities that enable commercialization among such early stage start-ups by adopting a multiple case (four independent cases) based inductive methodology with Indian tele com start-ups as the context. We have identified architectural design, algorithmic implementation an d product adaptation as components of technological capability of such start-ups. We furt her drill in to each of the sub-components of the technological capabilities to unearth their anteced ents and peculiarities in telecom product company context. As a result we also present a classificati on scheme for studying the product architecture in the telecom context. We analyze and point out differenc es in technological capability among telecom start-ups vis-a-vis established firms in the sector .