Incubatees at the Startup Village. Photo: FacebookKochi: India's first Public Private Partnership (PPP) incubator, Startup Village, continues to boost entrepreneurship. The total valuation of the Starups at the establishment are said to be Rs. 292 crores.
The Startup Village was established in April 2012. The Startup enterprises had created 2,889 jobs by the end of 2014. Thirty-seven startups have raised Rs 27 crores in funding from angel investors, private backers and seed funds and 161 have raised initial seed money from friends and family.
Until December 2014, the Startup Village received a total of 6,491 application requests. A total of 960 were incubated, of which 533 are currently active.
Student Startup community
With regards to the student startup community, Chairman of the Startup Village, Sanjay Vijaykumar, said “Of the 293 startups, 116 are active, 149 inactive and 28 fizzled out.”
The reasons behind this vary from the lack of family support to the insufficient funds available to run the company.
“Startup Village has created a great ecosystem focused on early stage startups. There is huge scope for further growth and if the constraints of infrastructure and funds are addressed, we can give India its Silicon Coast,” said Sanjay Vijaykumar.
The incubator is now collaborating with the Kerala government and Technopark-TBI to develop an entrepreneurial pipeline in the state. Boot Camps, launched by the state government, have been established in 25 colleges across the state with Startup Village acting as the mentor institution. The state government’s “Learn to Code” program has Startup Village as the knowledge partner.
Five student talents from Startup Village will be sent for a visit to the Silicon Valley in California as part of the SV Square programme. The participants are - Jibin Jose, Nithin George, founder of Qplay, Vijith Padmanabhan, Akash Mathew and Arvind Sanjeev, who runs a hardware DIY domain called diyhacking.com.
“The biggest recognition for the efforts of Startup Village, comes from the fact that we are collaborating with the Andhra Pradesh government to replicate this model. Launched in December last year, it has already incubated 51 startups there,” said Startup Village CEO Pranav Kumar Suresh.
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