HYDERABAD: After an illustrious journey with T-Hub and its startup ecosystem spanning three years, CEO Ravi Narayan has recently announced that he would be stepping down from his post due to family commitments once his replacement is found. He, however, would continue to be on the boards of several companies he has been associated with. In a rendezvous with Express, Ravi, who is also the Chief Innovation Officer of Telangana, walks us through the journey of startups in the country, the evolution of T-Hub into a virtual accelerator of startups during the pandemic and what lies ahead.
Excerpts:
On the evolution of startups
"It all started in the early 2000s when a generation of youngsters adopted themselves to information technology as the skill set of the world, which had found encouragement from the society as well. That was when startups started mushrooming using cost arbitrage and talent supplement to world projects. Today, startups in India have matured to a level where they are directly proposing solutions to chief innovation officers and chief financial officers of global bigwigs, which was not the case earlier.
Between 2006 and 2013, more and more youngsters started emerging as startup entrepreneurs, as it was getting more acceptance due to the excitement surrounding startups. From 2012, when the Indianisation of business models for B2C marketplaces specific to Indian markets started happening; startups have also penetrated the B2B models, now taking lesser time with smaller teams and being more ambitious. This has been contributing tremendously to the GDP."
On the role of T-Hub
"The pro-activeness of the State government to create a space for startup incubation and acceleration has now gone from co-working to virtual acceleration, making it a source of demand for startups where they can build a funding ecosystem through a slew of programs. This has helped startups to go global, creating pathways for the creation of ecosystems, which is a challenge being overcome."
On his experience with trial-and-error
"I downplay ‘startup failures’ because the faster they fail, the better off they are, as they can stop, rethink where they’ve gone wrong and do it differently through their own experiences. They can get ready to make changes and move ahead with perseverance."
On funding, challenges during Covid
"Funding is not a problem for startups if their innovation is good enough. Investors have been looking for strong startup teams -- from a commitment’s stand-point, willing to solve interesting problems with innovation. Though T-Hub’s ability to work with startups physically was a challenge, it has been effectively done through virtual methods. Boosting the capabilities of T-Hub to enable startups to progress would be the way forward."