A leg up for entrepreneurship

As a computer science student, Rohildev had been interested in the human-machine interface. So, in January 2012 when the soon-to-be-launched Startup Village, Kochi, invited him to an ‘open coffee’ event, he grabbed the opportunity. At the event, Rohildev discussed his idea of controlling a computer’s operations using hand gestures.

After the session, Sijo Kuruvilla, the then Chief Executive Officer of Startup Village, suggested that Rohildev become a part of Startup Village and work on his idea. Three months later and fresh out of engineering college, Rohildev was sitting at his own desk in the village.

“It was an exciting place,” Rohildev recalls. “We had free, unlimited, high-speed internet, and gadgets and apps that we could make use of any time.” The village was open 24 hours . And when he decided to launch his own venture — Fin Robotics — help was around to get the company registered and to handle legal and administrative issues.

“Through the excellent network of contacts at Startup Village, start-ups can access a whole set of services, including funding and product developers. Almost all the services were free,” Rohildev says. (Now Startup Village charges a monthly fee of ₹1,000 for a ‘seat’.)

Less than two years later, in 2013, Rohildev came out with the prototype of ‘Fin’, a ring-like device that controls smart gadgets. When the product won recognition, Rohildev raised ₹ 1.2 crore on the international crowd-funding platform indigogo.com. A few months back, Fin Robotics moved out of the Startup Village building when the team expanded . “But for Startup Village, I would perhaps not have developed ‘Fin’ and set up Fin Robotics,” the 25-year-old CEO says. He plans to market his product from May 2015. “It was exactly for helping young people like Rohildev to follow their dreams and usher in an entrepreneurial mindset in Kerala’s new generation that Startup Village was created,” says Pranav Kumar Suresh, the current CEO of Startup Village.

Set up in 2012 and housed in the Kinfra High-Tech Park on the outskirts of Kochi, Startup Village is a technology business incubator and is the first in India in the private-public-partnership (PPP) mould. It brought together the Kerala Government, the Central government’s Department of Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram’s Technopark; and MobME Wireless, the country’s first campus start-up. Currently, about 50 start-ups are housed in the Village. Nearly 500 more are “virtually incubated” as space is limited. Most are internet, telecom and electronics outfits, with a few also specialising in gaming and robotics. “The Village aims to create a vibrant start-up ecosystem and entrepreneurial culture in Kerala and encourage young people to set up their own business ventures,” says Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, who is also the Chief Mentor of the Village. “We hope to see a billion-dollar company emerge from a campus start-up in Kerala in the next ten years,” he added.

Though technology incubators host start-ups for a maximum of three years, at Startup Village, a product start-up can stay for five years. The infrastructure at Startup Village, which presently operates out of a 20,000 sq. feet building, is getting a boost. Within a year, it will get an additional one lakh sq ft of work space at the Technology Innovation Zone in the Kinfra Park. CEO Suresh points out that this would help the village incubate 250 more start-ups. “We aimed to incubate 1,000 in ten years, but see, in just under three years we have more than 500 waiting to move in,” he said. Space is just one part of the ecosystem. “It’s the networking rather than the infrastructure at the village that helps a young entrepreneur like me the most,” says Jibin Jose. He had started visiting the Village during weekends in his second year at college. “You get tips on solutions to problems you face — be it marketing, finance or government-related issues,” says Jose, now the co-founder and CEO of Flip Technologies. The start-up has developed a smartphone app that provides diagnostics for skateboarding.

Jose got a networking opportunity this year when he was selected for a mentoring programme in Canada. Last year, the Village had sent him and four other entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley.

As majority of the entrepreneurs are either students or those just out of college, unaware of the basics of running a firm, mentoring takes several forms at the village. For instance, when start-up Mashinga needed help to design its touch-screen table, Gopalakrishnan put the company in touch with a hardware designer associated with Infosys. In a monthly community event, experts from outside give tips to budding entrepreneurs. When it comes to specific issues, the entrepreneurs can access Startup Village’s network of partners, such as KPMG and net4, who offer services such as accounting and web hosting at a subsidised rate.

As the Village has a limited source of funds, it uses this network to help start-ups raise money. Financial institutions and investors have provided loans to 20 start-ups. And two of them (MindHelix Technologies and SectorQube Technologies) raised money on the Kickstarter global crowd-funding platform. “The Startup Village is a unique incubator in that here companies can go from idea to initial public offering,” points out Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman of the board of governors of Startup Village.

But is Startup Village a sustainable entity? “Frankly, we don’t know,” says Suresh. “It is just 28 months old and in many ways Startup Village itself is a start-up. We are a not-for-profit organisation, but we want to stand on our own financially,” he adds.

At present, the infrastructure is provided by State government agencies and expenses are met from the five-year, ₹2.5 crore-grant from the Department of Science and Technology. MobME Wireless has so far raised ₹4 crore and Gopakrishnan gives an annual grant. “Finding a sustainable revenue stream is our biggest challenge now,” says Suresh. Despite the challenges, Startup Village has had an impact. That was visible at the Young Entrepreneur Summit organised on September 12. Against the expected turnout of 2,000, more than 4,000 students gathered at the summit. To inspire more campus entrepreneurs, the government gives students creating start-ups a 20 per cent concession on attendance and 4 per cent ‘grace’ marks in exams. And the attitude is changing. “The risk-averse middle-class families, which are keen on their children getting secure jobs, now do not say an outright no if their sons or daughters want go into business,” says Jose.

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