'Tamil Nadu aims to rank among top 20 Global StartUp Ecosystems within a decade'

CHENNAI: State government’s goal is to rank among the top 20 Global StartUp Ecosystems within a decade, says Sivarajah Ramanathan, MD and CEO of Startup TN. In conversation with Ramakrishna, the Mission Director of the nodal agency of the TN Government’s StartUp and Innovation Mission said the state is taking necessary steps to attract Venture Capital firms.

Cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi are leading in attracting Venture Capital firms. But, why is Tamil Nadu lagging behind? What’s the reason?

Bengaluru has long been an IT hub. Most StartUps originated from IT. In the last 10 years only StartUp Opportunities are emerging in agri, manufacturing, D2C and other multiple domains. IT and Bengaluru is the first choice of VC firms. Next, as Mumbai is the Financial Capital with bodies, including SEBI there. Most of the VC firms have their registered offices in Mumbai and extended offices in Bengaluru. This is a traditional reason. Naturally, the advantage for VCs was Bengaluru and Mumbai, so there was a delay in bringing in VCs in other cities like Chennai. Now, the Tamil Nadu government is trying to attract those firms and there is no other negative reason. VC ecosystem, startup investments are new to TN. Although from 20 years ago, the number has increased only in the last 10 years. However, we are taking necessary steps to attract VC companies quickly.

Although there are more than 9,000 StartUps and incubators in Tamil Nadu, what is the reason for its low success rate?

There were 2,300 StartUps in 2021. But now there are more than 9,000 StartUps. The number of StartUps has increased 4 times. It’s a remarkable increase. We are currently studying the data related to success rate. Success rate cannot be generalised. Details regarding success rate will be published in the next 10 days. StartUp is a new idea. While implementing it, many failures are bound to occur. They say that only 1 out of 3 survive. All these are not final numbers. Proven business cannot scale, but can survive. But, there will definitely be more failures in StartUps that are doing innovative things. Globally, this is the phenomena.

About the next goal of the Startup TN..?

StartUp companies are companies that think innovatively and can scale. Cities around the world are ranked in creating an ecosystem for such companies to grow. Our goal is that Tamil Nadu should be among the top 20 ecosystems in the next 10 to 12 years in that ranking. Along with the Top 20, without big companies like unicorns, our idea is that geographical, caste and gender inclusivity should be developed as a whole. In my opinion, it is better to build 80 companies with enterprise value of Rs 100 crores than to build one unicorn company with enterprise value of US $ 1 bn. That’s where our journey lies. Large amounts of money in one place is not good for a country with a huge population like India.

When will work for the Global StartUp Summit begin?

We have started the work for the Global StartUp Summit. Complete information will be published in two weeks.