"25% of my time is spent in engaging with the government" said Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of the online car rental service Olacabs, while discussing his experience in working with the government regulators in the country, at a session in the recently concluded Nasscom Product Conclave 2013. Aggarwal said initially the time spent was for firefighting several regulatory issues they faced which they had no understanding about, but now it is a more proactive approach, where they engage with the state government before launching their operations in that specific city. Intent vs Execution of Govt policies Agarwal said the intent of the government policies is always consumer protection but the execution and the ground level implementation of the policy leaves a lot of variables to be decided and in most cases, the policy overreaches a lot either on the business side of things or due to a lot of vested interests involved. For instance, in the online cab industry, there are taxi unions, select bureaucrats and competitors who don't have clean operating principles. "What we've primarily seen is a wrong implementation of policies. The policy was intended correctly but the intent was some 20 years ago and the speed at which the policy iterates is too slow for modern technology businesses to thrive (in the country)." Regulatory System in India vs West Agarwal said the interface between the businesses and the government hasn't matured to the level seen in the west, especially in the cab industry. For example, the urban…
