Chandy woos budding telecom ‘entrepreneurs’

A view of the Startup Village facade.

By Ashraf Padanna/Kochi

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will take a break today from the soaring political heat in the state capital to interact with some thousand students who have responded to his call to become entrepreneurs rather than jobseekers.

The Startup Village located in this Kerala port city, which aims to create a ‘Silicon Coast’ in Kerala, will also be opening its doors to the public on the day as part of its “celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit” that has helped the project become one of India’s best regarded business incubators in just 15 months of its inception.

The Weekend@Startup Village, a two-day flagship event hosted by the country’s first telecom technology business incubator featuring workshops and pitch sessions for aspiring entrepreneurs, networking opportunities opened yesterday and gives a chance for the general public to experience telecom technology and entertainment programmes.

The event kicked with a series of workshops for student entrepreneurs on a range of topics relevant to nascent businesses – from design and coding to intellectual property and financing – from 11am to 1pm.

Later in the afternoon, the young entrepreneurs got an opportunity to pitch their ideas to the Startup Village’s community of angel investors for funding while some of India’s leading entrepreneurs shared the stories of their failures and successes.

The dignitaries at today’s celebrations include P K Kunhalikutty, the state’s industries minister, and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, the chief mentor of Startup Village, a pet project of Chandy who has announced a series of incentives to student entrepreneurs.

The Startup Village will introduce three new initiatives today – the Startup Village People Network, the 1K Developer Programme and the Experience Zone. The People Network is aimed at bringing together mentors to support companies incubated at the Startup Village.

The Developer Programme is a platform designed to provide 1,000 interested student developers a chance to gain exposure to the latest technology.

“We want people to come and see the entrepreneurial culture at Startup Village for themselves and understand the technology that drives their smartphones and other electronic devices,” said Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman of the Startup Village board. “We hope it will make some of the younger visitors curious about technology and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

Startup Village CEO Sijo Kuruvila George said the weekend event will be first-of-its-kind platform to bring all stakeholders together over the weekend to express solidarity with the entrepreneurial community and to support Startup Village in its efforts to build a powerful entrepreneurial eco-system.

“With its rich human capital, Kerala is a capable contender of the technological revolution, and right policies will help create an ecosystem that fosters innovation-led growth,” said Sanjay Vijayakumar.

India’s $1bn IT companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant were instrumental in creating the IT services ecosystem in the 80s, and the time is now ideal to create an IT products and innovation ecosystem that will build world-class IT startups from India.

“Internet has enhanced our benchmarking standards. Our product startups have to compete with startups in the Silicon Valley, where the ecosystem is 40 years ahead of us. In India, still there are many without access to Internet,” he said.

The 28-year-old recalled how he and a team of friends straight from the campus sought entrepreneurial support from Technopark in 2006 to sow the seeds of the first incubator company, MobME Wireless Solutions. That kind of support is what Startup Village is currently providing for entrepreneurs.

“There is a great difficulty to build IT Product as for 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.”

His group started from the campus associating with superstar Mammootty in 2005 who entrusted MobME with the publicity of Rajamanikyam, the film he was involved at that point in time. The tech savvy actor subsequently handed ten similar projects over to them.

“The promise that Kerala holds in nurturing a startup revolution is extremely high with attitudes as well as technologies that are changing,” Vijayakumar said.

“Smartphones will be a common gadget in the next three to four years. The next round of IT revolution would be the internet and Smartphones, and by riding this revolution many companies based in Kerala can rise to a global stage”.