The Indian economy has been powered by the ambition and grit of a growing bunch of superman entrepreneurs. As per Hurun India, last July, India had 334 billionaires, 55% of whom were first generation. Post the 1992 economic reforms, the number of superman entrepreneurs grew rapidly and between 2000 and 2025, the number of ₹1,000 crore plus revenue companies in India has gone up manifold.

The superman entrepreneur (SE) is a “force of nature”. They have achieved what very, very few people could have. It’s their superpowers that have allowed them to overcome the odds and build unlikely high-growth businesses. At the start they had few things going for them – just a burning ambition. These superman entrepreneurs could have had different origins – some may have been driven to start a business because they couldn’t find a job; others may have just hated the thought of joining the existing small family business; others felt claustrophobic in the companies they worked in repelled by the bureaucracy and conservative decision making; and a few had a driving passion that they could not shed and so went after it and ultimately succeeded.

None of these SEs had it easy. Everyone doubted them, they scrounged to raise capital, finding people to join them was tough, and they faced failure at the start but did not get deterred. They persevered and have lived to tell the tale. We are talking about entrepreneurs seeking to create industries and great companies, and not some shady businessmen with a high share of bad loans.

Here, we are creating a Weberian ideal type of the SE. While it is not specific to anyone, it attempts to capture essential traits.........

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