The global south is teeming with entrepreneurial activity, but entrepreneurs rarely receive the recognition and support they deserve. Many end up being driven out of business by larger, international players. Sagartirtha Chakraborty writes that the global innovation ecosystem is structurally unequal. He discusses possible ways to address the inequality.
“What’s the price of a rounded rectangle?” For Apple, it was $1 billion.
In one of the most iconic “thermonuclear” wars in tech history, Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying the design and functionality of the iPhone. The case dragged on for years and ultimately resulted in a damage award of over $1 billion, sending a clear message: ideas, even seemingly simple ones, are worth protecting at all costs. While global giants like Apple can defend their intellectual turf in courtrooms, what happens when a fledgling startup in Bangalore or Bogotá finds its pitch deck turned into someone else’s product without the luxury of legal muscle or media megaphones?
Asymmetry of power
The global south is often known for its frugal and high-impact entrepreneurship. However, from mobile banking in Kenya to tele-medicine in India, startups operate within a structurally unequal global innovation ecosystem. One of the disparities lies in access to capital.
African startups raised $3.2 billion in venture capital in 2023. That is down from $6.5 billion in 2022—still a drop in the bucket compared to the $170 billion raised by the US in the same year.
This imbalance extends into visibility and valuation, as founders from the global north, particularly those with Ivy League credentials or connections to Silicon Valley, tend to attract media attention, investor confidence, and higher valuations – even when offering similar solutions to that of local entrepreneurs. The consequence is described as epistemic injustice, whereby knowledge and ideas from the global south are under-valued or unrecognised due to systemic bias.
Loopholes and gaps
IP rights are meant to protect inventors and entrepreneurs, but global south startups lack institutional support, and legal safeguards are unaffordable. International patent filing fees could range from $100,000 to $2 million. As a consequence, in least developed countries, the number of IP application filings in their most commonly utilised form averaged just 2,197 per year between 2017 and 2021. In comparison, the global average was 26,034.
Patent application backlogs in India led to a 36 per cent reduction in the number of applications under scrutiny and a 15 per cent decrease in patent grants in 2024 as compared to 2020. Even when local patents are filed, they offer little recourse internationally, as most global south jurisdictions lack extraterritorial enforcement mechanisms. So, a patent filed in Nigeria offers no legal standing if a US or European firm copies the idea and commercialises it abroad.
Finally, the rise of open innovation platforms, where ideas are crowdsourced from around the world, has blurred the lines between collaboration and exploitation. Without robust IP protocols, nascent startups contributing to these platforms (un)knowingly surrender ownership of their innovations
Given existing feature creep strategies, companies constantly add features to their products, often incorporating startups’ ideas. An example was Apple’s incorporation of a flashlight into its operating system, a move that destroyed the developer of the flashlight app.
Struggle for recognition
Emerging economies of the global south like Turkey, India, Pakistan and Mongolia are ranked higher in innovation efficiency, but most of them are under-represented in patent filings and startup unicorn listings as compared to the global north. This suggests a mismatch between real innovation and global validation. Global south startups often lack access to global media platforms, which creates narrative exclusion. Their innovation stories are marginalised, leading to unequal recognition despite equal or greater impact.
The pioneering mobile payments platform M-Pesa launched in Kenya in 2007. It transformed financial access particularly among low-income populations, reached 10 million users in three years, became a fintech revolution across parts of eastern Africa, but failed to scale globally.
It attempted to expand into South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, but the initiative faltered and the South African arm closed in 2016. As of 2025, M-Pesa continues to thrive regionally but its broader international ambitions have largely stalled, underscoring how even transformative innovations from the global south struggle for validation and viability on the world stage.
There is an investor bias due to perceived risks, weaker legal frameworks and cultural unfamiliarity, creating hindrance for many promising startups of the global south to secure international partnerships. Even when startups gain traction, they face the issue of founder displacement, when original entrepreneurs are replaced by professional management teams to improve market appeal to global investors. Ninety-four per cent of the funding goes to the non-local, foreign-educated CEOs. This shows that the global south has been a source of ideas, but not influence.
A way forward
The silent appropriation of startup ideas from the global south is more than an IP concern, it is a matter of global justice. To foster a fairer global innovation ecosystem, international bodies like the World Intellectual Property Organization, World Trade Organization and UN Trade and Development must collaborate to simplify and subsidise transnational IP protection for startups in low- and middle-income countries.
Mechanisms like the Global IP Support Fund or fast-tracking multi-jurisdictional IP filings for startups under five years old can democratise protection. Again, incubators and venture capitalists in the global south must enforce robust, transparent IP safeguards, including binding cross-border non-disclosure agreements and third-party grievance redressal systems to deter unethical appropriation.
Finally, global innovation narratives and recognition metrics should be redefined to value context-specific solutions created for informal markets and under-served communities, ensuring that innovation equity extends not only to who creates but also to who benefits. After all, in the global startup race, it’s not just the fastest idea that wins, it’s the one that survives being stolen.
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- This blog post represents the views of its author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Hi, Sagar. You’ve mentioned about “Narrative Exclusion”
So, how do you think, international media coverage be made more inclusive to spotlight innovations emerging outside traditional tech hubs?
Hi Partha..
Let me address your question with a quick example. Take India’s “Araku Coffee” – it’s grown by Adivasi farmers in the state of Andhra Pradesh using organic methods using quality technology. Backed by the Coffee Board and the Integrated Tribal Development Agency, over 150 thousand tribal families have helped increase its production by 20%, which in turn boosted its global exports.
The real push, though, came from strong media backing. Platforms like YourStory, The Hindu, Times of India, and CNBC helped bring their story into the spotlight. This shows how homegrown media can shape narratives and give startups the stage they deserve.
If others in the global south follow this model, who knows, our next favorite global brand might be growing quietly in a remote village right now..!!
Coming altogether and standing against the odds seem to be a way forward in terms of increasing global recognition. So, what role can global platforms (like the UN, or G20) play in pushing for more inclusive innovation ecosystems worldwide?
Collective action is the definitive key.
G20 has stepped up meaningfully over the years. From launching “Women-20” initiative during Turkey’s presidency to India’s 2023 introduction of the “Startup-20 Engagement Group” to foster global collaboration among startups, iys moves are aimed at building a more unified, inclusive startup ecosystem.
If we take a look at “mPedigree” – launched by a Ghana based entrepreneur. Over the time, it has partnered with organisations like World Economic Forum, Ashoka, Nokia, and other regulators across Ghana, Nigeria, and India.
The impact? “Fortune” ranked it 34th on its “Change the World” list – beating out giants like Tesla and LinkedIn.
That’s the power of global platforms backing local brilliance..
Hi, Sagar. You’ve mentioned about global south, and global south is incomplete without India. Being an entrepreneur myself, Indian startups receive very less in terms of global VC funding, despite being the world’s 3rd largest startup ecosystem. Why do you think this is? Is it because of valuation biases or lack of global visibility?
Hi, Dipankar..
I think, it’s largely a mix of both valuation biases and limited global visibility, with the former often fuelling the latter. Indian startups attracted just 2.3% of global VC funding in 2023. This funding gap isn’t due to lack of innovation, but often because they are under-valued when benchmarked against Western counterparts, especially in sectors serving informal or rural markets.
Take “Dehaat” for example. It’s a game-changing agri-tech startup that provides AI-enabled services to over 1.5 million farmers, more than 10 thousand micro entrepreneurs across India. Despite attracting investors like Sofina and Omnivore, it may not enjoy the same global buzz as Western startups with smaller user bases but flashier business models. Why? Because solutions tailored to the global south often don’t match the valuation templates used by VCs in the global north – and that affects media coverage, partnership opportunities, and visibility.
However, things are changing. Initiatives like “Startup-20” under India’s G20 presidency and platforms like “YourStory” are increasingly pushing Indian innovations into the global limelight. With the right mix of storytelling, strategic alliances, and media amplification, India’s visibility and valuation are bound to rise. This is evident by India’s tech startups outshining China, Germany with $11.3 billion raised in 2024. So, I think, the story is far from over it’s just beginning to scale.
Hi Sagar, I agree with your insights on the global South’s struggle for entrepreneurial recognition. However, considering that India has recently seen a notable ~15% rise in patent applications, could this indicate that the pace of recognition is improving faster than anticipated?
Thank you, Ankita.
Well, the 15% rise in patent applications in India signals a positive shift, but it’s a bit complex. Even though it’s a strong indicator of local innovation momentum; yet this rise hasn’t yet been translated proportionally into global VC interest or international recognition.
Why? Because many of these patents are in early-stage tech or frugal innovation – sectors that are often under-valued by Western VCs who tend to favor high-cap, scalable ventures.
So, while the pace of paper-based recognition is gradually improving, the challenge still lies in converting this IP surge into global narrative traction and funding pipelines.