Innovation is integral to human creativity: Aruna Sundararajan, former IT Secretary 

The 11^th edition of Kerala’s largest conference on entrepreneurship ‘TiEcon Kerala 2022’ began at Kochi.

Inaugurating the conference, Aruna Sundararajan, former secretary, Ministries of Steel, IT and Telecom said that there is so much energy in the technology and start-up space both in the country and in Kerala.

“The breadth of start-up and entrepreneurship that Kerala has is a clear pointer that there cannot be a better time for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Innovation is integral to human creativity. In Kerala, we need to contain the forces of inertia against creativity and create and nurture an environment where the natural exuberance and innovativeness of people can actually flourish.

Innovation

In Kerala young talents are in the forefront to solve local problems and make a positive impact with the aid of technology.

The metric of success of innovation and start-up is making a positive impact- It is equivalent to a hundred unicorns”, Sundararajan said.

Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman and MD, Cognizant India said the ability to reinvent is a trait companies will have to possess to stay competitive for longer. It should reinvent the business models, processes and talent.

“Organisation which was extremely successful at one point of time and unfortunately failed over a period of time. Fortune’s 500 list was first published in 1955. Now less than 12 per cent of companies which were in the 1st list continue. The forces that challenge the competitive advantage could be both external and internal- changing behaviour of market, changing customer needs, advancement in technology or external events like pandemic.,’ he said,

‘We should not fail to reinvent. You have to re-invent the process internally and process change brings sustainability. These are not one-time activities,’ Nambiar said.

Speaking on the growth of investments in corporate innovation, Ravi Narayan, Trustee, TiE Global Board and Co-founder, Microsoft for start-ups said that recent years witnessed major strides in start-up funding, merger and acquisition and open innovation programmes.

Corporate participation in start-up funding has increased by 80 per cent. The participation is in 230 plus deals in 2021 as against 130 plus deals in 2020. Seed stage investment increased 150 per cent, while early and late-stage funding grew by 50 per cent.

Acquisitions also increased by 50 per cent. The acquisitions of companies older than five years grew by 100 per cent while acquisitions of younger companies shrunk by 20 per cent.

“We also saw 80 plus programs on Open Innovation with start-ups, spread across 20 plus industries recording a compound annual growth rate of 19 per cent from 2017,’ Ravi Narayan said.

Damodar Avanoor, Chairman TiEcon Kerala 2022, Anisha Cherian, President, TiE Kerala, Arun Nair, Executive Director, TiEcon Kerala, Faizal Kottikollon, Chairman, KEF holdings addressed the Inaugural section.

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