That start-ups die in hundreds is no news. The mortality rate among start-ups is as high as 90 per cent. Though it expects no big change there in the immediate future, the Nasscom sees a silver lining. The mean age of start-up founders has gone up to 33 years from 26.

“This is a good sign. People with maturity, domain knowledge and with tremendous understanding of business challenges are setting up ventures,” Ashok Madravally, Director, Nasscom 10,000 Startup Programme, told BusinessLine .

The programme, which will turn four in March 2017, has so far ‘impacted’ (received funding, mentor ship and finding space in accelerators or incubators) about 1,500 start-ups. “There are about 200 start-ups in the warehouses we set up in different parts of the country. Of them, 30-35 start-ups received funding to the tune of $30 million and another 10 ventures were acquired,” he said.

Ashok, who was in the city in connection with the launch of IBM’s digital platform for the start-up ecosystem, said the fresh graduates might have great passion but their understanding of business challenges might not be good. “Moreover, people with experience will also have some bank balance so that they can run the ventures without much difficulty,” he said.

There is a shift in the quality and diversity of start-ups too. “More and more business-to-business start-ups are coming up. They are focussing on small and medium businesses. Unlike in the past, the focus is more on business-to-business and not on business to consumers,” he said. He said there won’t be any big change in the mortality rates.

“There are about 6,000 registered start-ups in the country. But we have received over 15,000 applications from people that have not registered their ventures,” he said.

Slowdown

Ashok admitted that there was a slowdown in investments. “There is a slowdown of 8-10 per cent in investments. But the number of start-ups that got funded has gone up,” he said.

He said the start-up ecosystem was getting stronger as even corporates such as Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and SAP are beginning to device specific programmes for start-ups. Several State governments too were coming up with policies offering incentives to start-ups.

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