God's own country Kerala, is pulling all stops to foster entrepreneurship. Startup Village, the incubator formed as a public private partnership between the state government and private players, is planning to launch a landing pad for Indian startups in the United States.
The new center will act as a landing pad for the Indian startups looking to enter the crucial US markets and also help them understand the startup ecosystem in the US. Infosys Co-Chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan and other entrepreneurs from Kerala had earlier joined hands to form an angel network to invest in Kerala based startups.
Sanjay Vijayakumar, CEO of MobME and promoter of Startup Village, said: “In India there is a lack of product startup ecosystem and many startups entering the US are not aware of the ecosystem in the US which is the technology hub. The new centre will provide opportunities for the young entrepreneurs to understand the market in the US, interact with similar companies and tech leaders.”
Startup Village which aims to incubate around 1,000 product start ups over next 10 years will also send student entrepreneurs to the US as part of the learning exercise. Recently, the state government had introduced a new policy which allows students to miss up to 20 per cent of classes and also grace marks for student entrepreneurial projects.
“With the government's new initiative to promote student entrepreneurial projects we are seeing lot more students taking this role,” added Vijayakumar.
In its effort to support entrepreneurship the state is now helping to form an angel network to support the startups. The angel network termed as 'Mallu Angel Network' will create a network of around 1,000 successful Kerala-born entrepreneurs and industrialists from across the world to offer mentoring services to the new start-ups. The network will be anchored by Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder of Infosys and chief mentor of Startup Village. Other members of network would include Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Shyam Srinivasan, chief executive of Federal Bank Ltd, Jai Menon, Group Director - IT for Bharti Enterprise Group, C J George, founder of Geojit Financial Services, among others.
“Mallu Angel Network will be a not for profit body like the Mumbai Angel Network. We are going to leverage the advantage of having wealthy and successful Kerala born entrepreneurs to foster start-up growth,” said Kerala Chief Minister's economic advisor Shaffi Mather.
Other than the new centre in the US, and angel network, the Startup Village is also planning to set up Kerala's first angel fund 'Startup Village Angel Fund-1' of around $10 million with an option to go up to $20 million which is awaiting Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) approval.
