Kerala creates 533 startups in 1,000 days

Kochi Startup Village entreprenuers generate a total 2,889 jobs by the end of 2014 calendar year

In its journey of more than 1000 days, the Kochi Startup Village has been successful in generating 533 new startups that command a market valuation of Rs 292 crore.

India's first public private partnership incubator Startup Village had completed 1,000 days on January 10 this year and had seen 37 startups raising a total Rs 27 crore funding from the angel investors, private backers and seed funds. Also, 161 other startups had raised initial seed money from friends and family.

In the midst of this success, the Village's startups have in turn generated a total 2,889 jobs by the end of the calendar year 2014.

Starting from its inception on April 15, 2012, till December 2014, the internet-mobile incubator had received a total 6,491 application requests from young entreprenuers. From a total 960 startups that took shape, including 58 physical and 902 virtual, a promising 533 have been active.

"The survival rate of physically-incubated startups is 96.5 per cent, while it is 53 per cent for virtual startups, which clearly shows a physical ecosystem substantially increases the chances of a startup doing well," said Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman of Startup Village.

Paucity of funds accounted for 18 per cent of the mortality of student startups. Lack of family support (10.5%), well-placed jobs (43%), unviable business idea (11%), market competition (7%) and the pursuit of higher studies (3.5%) were among the other major factors that led to the failure of some of these startups, Startup Village had stated.

Vijayakumar said there was a 40 per cent quarterly sequential growth in the total applications received by them. As against 136 applications during Oct-Dec, 2012, a high 1,287 and 5,971 applications had been received in 2013 and 2014 respectively.

"When we started in 2012, our commitment to the department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, was to incubate 48 startups, raise Rs 2.5 crore through private sector, organise 20 events, create 10,000 sft of infrastructure space and to forge 10 partnerships in the next five years," said Vijayakumar.

The incubator has been collaborating with Kerala government and Technopark-TBI to develop an entrepreneurial pipeline in the state. As part of this, 25 Startup Boot Camps have been established in colleges across the state, with Startup Village acting as the mentor institution.

The state government's 'Learn to Code' has also been initiated with the distribution of 2,500 Raspberry Pi units to the Class VIII school children. Here Startup Village is the knowledge partner and IT@School and Technopark-TBI being the implementation partners.

SV Square programme, an initiative to attract five young student talents from the Village for a visit to Silicon Valley in California has been doing well. Under it, Jibin Jose, founder of Flip Technologies, was selected for the Canadian Government's accelerator programme.

Successful entreprenuerial stories include Arvind Sanjeev, who is operating hardware Do-it-Yourself (DIY) domain called diyhacking.com.

"The biggest recognition for Startup Village comes from the fact that we are collaborating with the Andhra Pradesh government to replicate this model. Launched in Dec last year, it had already incubated 51 startups there," said Startup Village CEO Pranav Kumar Suresh.