If today is a startup, 2024 needs to profit

Will the startup that is 2024 ultimately turn into a profitable, scaled-up company that rakes in the moolah? VCs have certainly lined up to invest heavily into this leap year, the term being bandied around in both its literal and symbolic senses. Sitting from where you are – on the first day of 2024, hands tingling to put your money where wealth creation is – the next 366 days look bankable. But there’s something in between now and mid-year that’ll determine whether you’ll put all your chips in.

For the last few years, you’ve been hearing how 2024 is the year for the cows to come home – because of the much-touted Lok Sabha elections.

While ‘continuity’ seems to be the preferred mode of increasing ‘ease of doing business’, as someone who understands that being risk-averse is helpful once you’ve reached a certain balance sheet position, it may or may not be optimum positioning. Brave businessing means taking brave – but not irrational – risks.

Will 2024 turn the tide of Indian businesses being perennial startups to becoming muscular companies and conglomerates? We certainly hope so. And, for that, a word of advice: scale up and get into a prosperous glide path despite the dispensation that comes to/stays in town, instead of depending on it. There’s no business like showing business, regardless of how the other guys at the hustings do.