Start-ups are defined as newly formed enterprises without
any previous history of operation, predominantly technology based, knowledge
intensive, helping wealth and employment
creation, necessarily an economic growth engine for any nation, but with limited survival rate. All those multi-billion dollar global behemoths, be it Google, EBay,
Amazon or Facebook; began as start-ups, with an innovative idea disrupting the
way in which business is done or by creating a brand new product or solution,
the type of which never existed until then.
India too got caught up under
the whirlwind of start-up revolution, having close to 10000 registered start-ups now of which close to 25 of them had attained Unicorn status (valuation of US$1
Billion), some of them being M/s. Inmobi, Paytm, Flipkart, Oyorooms, Zomato, Byju’s,
Ola, Big basket, swiggy, freshworks & Quicker. There are many more Indian
start-ups poised to become unicorns and it is predicted that by 2025, the country will have around 100 unicorns,
enjoying a cumulative valuation of about US$ 400 Billion. This is indeed
great news for India! Indian start-ups had generated direct jobs in excess of
200,000 and in time to come, this is going to be much more. It is estimated that each direct job will facilitate 3 times the indirect
jobs.
The country has over 335 active incubators and accelerators with a capacity to enable over 5,000
start-ups every year. 57 percent of these are active outside Tier- I cities which means there is entrepreneurship happening in different category of cities within India.
Not to be left behind,
Kerala today boasts of being the third largest Start-up ecosystem of the
country, having 17% of the start-ups of India being registered here. Some of
these start-ups had gained good traction already to scale-up and come from
different technology propositions such as Robotics, AI, Computer Vision, Block
chain and Aggregated Market Places.
From the year 2017 till
now, India, start-ups had received venture funds in excess of US$ 30 Billion
with OYO and Swiggy receiving venture funds in excess of US$ 1 Billion
each. However, Kerala start-ups lagged behind in this area, with the
total inflow of venture funds not exceeding US$ 100 million. There are many
areas of improvement for Kerala start-ups. Incubation, Acceleration, Mentoring
& Funding are the necessary ingredients for start-up growth which in Kerala is now slowly
becoming part of the ecosystem.
As the examples of US
& China show, start-ups will be the economic growth engine of nations and
therein lies the Indian hope!
