The game is always rigged.
My
father’s disdain for the arts far exceeded his indifference toward my
dyslexia, forcing me, a numerically uncabled person, to study commerce—a
subject I quickly developed an equal disdain for. What college didn’t
teach me, despite being about trade and commerce, was that the game is
rigged and the dice is always loaded.
My
first proper job selling cars in Kolkata seemed like a dream for an idealistic
auto lover, till it quickly fell apart. I learned that most of the
gruff, uncouth buyers who booked ₹6 lakh cars did so only to sell the
allocations at a premium. Concurrently, my seeing how a nonchalant young
plain-Jane at the bus stand, hopped into a van full of sleazy guys after a
brief chat, catapulted the rest of my innocence to oblivion. We learned
that our rival dealer outsold us five to one because he was a
well-heeled Marwari businessman who was related to, or knew all the who's who in town,
and that the car manufacturer's regional office chaps were on his donation roll. They also expected dealership staff to bow low to them, despite knowing practically nothing about the cars
or the customers.
Later, as an auto
journalist writing a magazine bike column, the outgoing editor boasted
about running the rag for over a year without anyone having a
driver’s license. His replacement was a borderline psychotic bike
enthusiast who broke every journalistic norm, sent out drunken rants by
email, and seemed determined to prove he was a reckless asshole. He
succeeded, crashed a few test cars, and soon drove the magazine into the ground. By then, I was
unpaid for months. Despite having a decent readership and a flair for
writing, I could never find another gig —aside from the occasional
dangling carrot to get free work done. Why? Because most editors were
moonlighting as consultants for manufacturers or riding the gravy train
of freebies: the business class flight to Stuttgart, the bullet train to
Nagoya. Sometimes, a few crumbs fell to the senior staff too. So, who needed rogue truth speakers, writing skills be damned.
Now,
in the world of startups, the scene is no different. I don’t know the
exact ratio, but the number of incubators mushrooming everywhere
certainly isn't about promoting the Supreme Leader's vision of empowering Indian
startups or Atmanirbhar Bharat.
These are the new NGOs, the "Dukan" variety!
A few years in this space, and nothing surprises me any more.
And
believe me, the inept seminar even managers and webinar organizers parroting startup
mantras—people who’ve never built anything themselves— may actually be the
best of the lot. The most benign ones are in it for their salaries, which are quite often much higher than what bootstrapping founders can afford to pay themselves.
Otherwise, it starts with incubator staff skimming cuts from disbursed grants—government and CSR funds, mind you—and goes all the way up to their bosses siphoning money through shell startups. Many saddle their incubatees with rent and incubation fees hidden behind classic bait-and-switch tactics. Some offer one-sided contracts that startup founders either don't understand or are too desperate—or broke—to have vetted by a competent lawyer. Not that most lawyers even grasp the nuances of startup contracts themselves.
Then there are the idea thieves—those who harvest concepts from ideation-stage applicants. Not to build anything themselves, of course. No, they peddle those ideas to wealthier businessmen as consultants. Others act as scouts for land sharks—VCs—always looking to carve out their pound of flesh.
There are more games being played than I can even claim to know. The deeper you go, the murkier it gets.
As I said at the beginning: the game is always rigged.
