> Sturgeon’s law applies here. 95% of all startups will fail. There’s no escaping it.
I don't know about India or software startups in particular, but according to Dun and Bradstreet the 4-year survival rate of new businesses is 37%.
Edit: I can't confirm the 37% figure. It's a number that stuck in my head from a few years ago. They're latest report [1] doesn't include survival rates.
Small and/or lifestyle businesses are great, but there are many properties they don't share with startups (mainly scalability leading to growth). In many cases a "new business" simply mean an independent contractor who in this statistic might as well be a regular salaried employee. Also someone spending time building a prototype, validating the market, looking for funding etc. but not bothering to register the business while there's no revenue could fail before ever making it into the "new business" statistic.
Therefore it's perfectly plausible that 95% of startups fail while only 63% of all new businesses do.
Then of course there's the fact that the 95% number is rhetoric, not a statistic.
I don't know about India or software startups in particular, but according to Dun and Bradstreet the 4-year survival rate of new businesses is 37%.
Edit: I can't confirm the 37% figure. It's a number that stuck in my head from a few years ago. They're latest report [1] doesn't include survival rates.
[1] http://www.dnbgov.com/pdf/US_Business_Trends_Jan11.pdf