HYDERABAD: With a vision to "build a movement to scale up mass entrepreneurship", M Srinivas Rao, the newly appointed CEO of T-Hub, State-funded startup incubator, shares his plans on developing T-Hub in an interview with The New Indian Express.
"T-Hub has made a significant headway from being a startup hub to becoming an innovation ecosystem. Initially, the focus has been on early-stage startups, but now we will also help later-stage entities to raise funding and [help them] scale-up," he said.
For a startup to taste success, he suggests his framework of 3Ms and 2Cs (market, mentors, money, capacity and customers). He feels that providing market access to global businesses, providing them mentorship and helping them raise funds while ensuring that the money raised is in line with the original mandate would be crucial.
He also stresses the need to build organisational capacity, marketing, HR, technology and other aspects and that the startup, through its product or solution, needs to create customer delight.
Talking about the mindset of the investors when they fund startups, he said that during the early stages, they would be looking at the team, their passion and commitment to deliver and how strong their idea is.
The investors also look if the product or service provided by the startup can make a substantial difference, whether it is disruptive or incremental, and if it can demonstrate a stated or an unstated need, he added.
"Is the scale of the idea so massive that it can solve a big problem? Can it deliver substantial financial results? What market traction and execution capability have already been demonstrated? What is the strategy designed for execution, investors would be studying the startups around these aspects," he said while sharing about the thinking of an investigation.
Regarding the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed to at the World Economic Forum, he suggested that cleantech would be a big area of focus.