IIM-A centre's bid to create local ecosystems for start-ups

The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A)'s technology and business incubator, the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), wants that start-ups should stay put in the place of their origin.

For this purpose, the centre is focusing on creating local ecosystems by reaching out to potential partners in other regions. For instance, a year ago, CIIE set up an incubation centre in Jaipur in partnership with Rajasthan Industrial Corporation. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Maharashtra Industries Development Corporation in Pune for a similar initiative.

"If you look at cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, most of the country's start-ups are flocking to these places because that is where they will find the right ecosystem. But what will happen to the local economy from where they originally emerged? We have, therefore, started focusing on building a local ecosystem and are increasingly looking at regional presence and help build these local ecosystems," says Kunal Upadhyay, chief executive officer at CIIE.

Upadhyay argues that the two most important things that start-ups need today are capital and talent, which they fail to find in their originating towns. "If you won't create an environment of capital and talent, start-ups will not stay put. Thankfully, state governments are realising that if people are being encouraged towards entrepreneurship through policies, they also need to be given the right kind of environment to thrive," says Upadhyay.

He cited the example of the Rajasthan government that has set up a corpus for investing in start-ups.

CIIE is not only partnering with local government bodies but also working towards linking mentors, investors and innovators. Moreover, the incubation centre also invests mostly at the angel level on a case-to-case basis.

What's more, while it now has centres in states like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, CIIE is actively looking at more such centres.

CIIE currently houses a dozen start-ups at its flagship centre on the IIM-A campus, apart from an active portfolio of 75-80 start-ups that it mentors. The Jaipur centre, on the other hand, currently incubates 50 start-ups.

Word is gradually going out on the incubation centre's efforts to tap regions for creating local ecosystems of capital, talent and incubation. So much so that states like Odisha and Madhya Pradesh have also approached CIIE for similar partnerships, even as a centre is set to come up in Andhra Pradesh in the next eight months.