Herd mentality and Indian startups

I’ve noticed the herd mentality is becoming popular when it comes to Indian startups. Let me explain what I mean.

One startup enters a particular domain with all fan fare and great buzz. Within no time you’ll come across news about 2-3 more startups launching in the same domain. Plenty of examples to illustrate my point:

1) Seventymm was the first entrant into the online DVD rental market. Suddenly you have Madhouse, CatchFlix, ClixFlix and several others who follow suit (For crying out loud, you dont have these many players in the US too)

2) Video Sharing for India - I dont know which one launched first. But within no time, you have AapKaVideo, MeraVideo, ApnaTube, VideoDubba

3) Shaadi.com came first. Then there was BharatMatrimony, JeevanSaathi, Badhai, MeraSathi, timesmatri

4) There’s indimoto, Carwale, automartIndia, AutoIndia, IndiaAutoMall (again - unsure which came first)

5) MakeMyTrip came first. Then came a D-E-L-U-G-E : Yatra, TravelGuru, ClearTrip, FlightRaja, Arzoo and numerous others

6) Picsquare was first. MeraSnap, PhotoJagat, PhotoMasti, iTasveer, SnapGalaxy quickly followed suit

7) Fropper and Orkut struck first. The next morning you read about Yaari, iBibo, MingleBox, Jhoom, SaffronConnect

There’s HumDigg, IndianBytes, NewsCola, PutVote, IndianPad, IndiaMarks (unsure which was first)

Is this healthy for the Indian startup scene ? Is this a good phenomena? Is the Indian startup scene lacking originality and innovation (Not to take away anything from the numerous innovative ones out there) ? One can argue that some of these markets have room for more than one player. Also, considering that majority of the sites listed above are in their infancy, the market will evolve and only the fittest will survive.

I’d like to hear what everyone has to say about this ‘herd mentality’. I’m planning to do a follow up post to this sometime later.

Note: If you find any of the links above are broken, please feel free to point it out. Also, I havent intentionally left out the other players in their respective segments.