The focus now in this entrepreneurial city is nurturing start ups and several industrial organisations are looking at encouraging new entrepreneurs, business ideas and innovation.
There are student chapters of entrepreneur organisations and regular talks and meetings are organised to guide entrepreneurs and start-ups. Apart from start-ups that are supported through organisations, there are many new technology-based companies that are coming up.
K. Suresh Kumar of PSG STEP says there is considerable progress in the start-up segment here. The STEP has supported over 100 start-ups through its incubator facilities and 60 to 70 per cent are successful ventures now. Though most of the companies were in the IT segment in the initial years, now there are start-ups in food processing and automation too.
In Coimbatore, the incubation infrastructure can support 100 to 120 companies at any given time. There are at least double the number that are not in the incubation facilities here. Most of the start-ups are by those who have worked in areas such as product development and want to start their firm. In the IT space, they are mostly looking at aggregators and e-commerce.
The city needs an enabling ecosystem with infrastructure for start-ups, investors and mentors. “We need more people to support start-ups,” he says.
The Native Angels Network, which launched its Coimbatore chapter, a few months ago to support start-ups with angel funding is also hopeful of encouraging more companies.
The Coimbatore chapter of Young Indians will organise a start-up summit here on Saturday. According to Swathy Rohit, Yi Chair, the Yi has been organising such a summit for the last three years. It conducted outreach programmes two months ago for those who have ideas or partially developed projects. Entrepreneurs and mentors spoke to them and applications were invited.
Of these, 30 were selected and they participated in a boot camp. They were also mentored for a month. At the pitch session, select companies will pitch their projects and some will be identified for funding. “We are aiming to be an incubator to help start-ups,” she said.
There have been start-ups in agriculture, travel and tour, and manufacturing sectors. There were some social entrepreneurship concepts too, she said.
Mr. Suresh Kumar says that even the Government is now looking at promoting start-ups. These efforts should give a boost to such ventures in the city.
