The Startup Village in Kochi is planning to give a helping hand to cash-strapped entrepreneurs.
According to Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman of Startup Village which is set to create a ‘Silicon Coast’ in Kerala, said that budding talents who have the intelligence and courage to pursue their goals would be promoted. The Startup Village is set to achieve its five-year goal at the end of its very first year itself, having already received more than 900 applications, he told a meet-the-press programme here on Tuesday.
The 28-year-old said that he could have left for the Silicon Valley in the United States after completing his course at the College of Engineering here, but chose to stay back in his home state.
‘’The Startup Village has facilitated such a trend and inspired thousands of young entrepreneurs to stick on in Kerala,’’ he added.
Vijayakumar said only a few states, including Andhra Pradesh, have offered significant co-operation to build Startup Villages. ‘’An ecosystem for creating homegrown companies can be ensured here also,’’ he said.
He noted that Kerala and India were at least 40 years behind Silicon Valley in creating an environment for promoting entrepreneurship. ‘’When it comes to intelligence, our engineers are on par with their American counterparts. What Kerala lacks is in capital and infrastructure. Also, prospective entrepreneurs seldom used to get encouragement,’’ he said. Vijayakumar, co-founder and CEO of MobME, recalled how he and a team of friends sought entrepreneurial support from Technopark in 2006 to sow the seeds of the first incubator company, MobME Wireless Solutions. Information Technology currently has two sectors; IT Services and IT Products. Silicon Valley companies are very focused on creating products. ‘’The emphasis in the 80s was on IT services which saw the rise of billion dollar companies such as Infosys and TCS, while today product companies have gained importance in the field of IT. India does not really have an ecosystem for IT products which the Startup Village is now trying to address,’’ he said.
There is a great difficulty in building IT Products as for the first three years the companies hardly earn anything. ‘’Once Startup Village came on to the scene, the number of applicants wanting to set up production firms shot up. It has been tough to select the best among them; it only proves their merit.’’