Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India

Abstract

In recent years, a new class of entrepreneurs and investors has emerged in India. In this article, based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with start‐ups in Delhi, I examine how entrepreneurs are valued by investors and the sociocultural implications of this process. I make two arguments. First, the criteria used to judge creditworthiness, including personal networks, technological capability, and ability to undertake speculative risk, serve as signals of an entrepreneur's value to prospective investors. Second, as investors acknowledge, the investment is made in the specific personhood of the entrepreneur rather than the business plan. Therefore the process of seeking investment capital, far from being simply a means of scaling one's business, is an act of cultural construction. The entrepreneur's value as wealth‐in‐people is not judged objectively; rather, it is created through the process of pitching and securing investment commitments. One of the contributions of this research is to center the real and perceived relationship between entrepreneurs and investors in studying start‐up spaces in India. Examining this relationship reveals the forms of economic, sociocultural, and moral value that are interwoven with each other. The multiple, often contradictory meanings attached to entrepreneurship are negotiated through the prism of investment, which emerges as a dynamic site for constructing and contesting entrepreneurial identities.