The Chennai chapter of the entrepreneurship development community TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) has grown its member base by more than three times in the last 12 years, and has emerged as the biggest chapter globally, executives of TiE Chennai said at its Silver Jubilee celebration on Saturday.

“With over 1,400 members, we are the biggest chapter of TiE globally today. Our revenue has grown at around 42 per cent CAGR in the last 20 years and our membership base has increased by almost four times from 2013,” Sriram Subramanya, President, TiE Chennai, and Managing Director & CEO, Integra Software Services, said.

TiE is a not-for-profit organization founded in California, US and today it has over 63 chapters spread across 13+ countries with over 30,000 members.

Speaking at the event, Murali Bukkapatnam, Chair, TiE Global Board of Trustees, noted that TiE Chennai’s unique initiative of Personal Boards has been a great success and inspiration for all TiE chapters. Personal Boards brings together a closed informal group of entrepreneurs from non-competing businesses to facilitate conversations and sharing of perspectives. TiE also runs other support programmes such as TiE Catalyst for personal and professional transformation.

The event brought together industry titans, entrepreneurs, and over 900 delegates to explore transformation of TN’s entrepreneurship ecosystem and also chart a vision for future of the state’s start-up ecosystem. The conference also hosted successful founders such as Ather Energy’s Tarun Mehta , Gaurav Aggarwal, founder and CEO, Savaari Car Rentals and Rajat Gupta of TESSOL to share their entrepreneurial journeys.

R Ramaraj, Senior Advisor at Elevar Equity, and past president of TiE Chennai noted that TiE started as a means to showcase the potential of Chennai’s entrepreneurial culture post the Y2K era. “While the start-up ecosystem here has grown in the 25 years, Tamil Nadu is still not recognised as an entrepreneurial state. We have all the incubators and mentorship needed for it but we need far more funding and marketing of our entrepreneurs to achieve this,” he said.

Lakshmi Narayanan, another TiE past president and Former CEO of Cognizant said that TiE Chennai earlier had the reputation of being an IT industry-centric platform and they have taken efforts over the years to support the state’s MSMEs to be technologically literate. Today, more than 70 per cent of TiE Chennai’s member companies are non-IT in nature.

Rising demand

TiE has seen a rising demand for business coaching among small businesses and family businesses across Coimbatore, Madurai and other tier 2 towns and has catered to their needs in the past few years, V Shankar, founder of CAMS and past president of TiE Chennai added.

Entrepreneur and investor Naru Narayanan and CK Ranganathan, CMD, CavinKare were also among other past presidents who addressed the event.

Published on January 25, 2025