It was a remarkable year for start-ups and the young entrepreneurs behind them, and Startup Village, the country’s first public-private partnership-based technology business incubator, played the role of a mentor effectively. The year 2014 began with the culmination of SV Squared, a novel entrepreneur exposure program launched by Startup Village in association with the government, under which five student entrepreneurs were given an opportunity to visit Silicon Valley and interact with heads of some of the most successful start-ups in the world’s best entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Later in the year, while celebrating the second anniversary of Startup Village, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy announced the State government’s proposal to set up the Silicon Valley landing pad at an investment of about Rs. 4 crore for young entrepreneurs visiting the world’s IT hub under the SV Squared.
Startup Village also launched its app on iOS and Android platforms. Since its launch in September, more than 1,000 registrations for incubation have been received through the app, which has been designed as a one-stop-shop for all incubation and entrepreneurship related activities at Startup Village.
The year also witnessed entrepreneurs based at Startup Village pioneering a crowd-funding initiative to raise funds. RHL Vision, incubated at Startup village, raised more than $200,000 through crowd-funding while another start-up, Indiegogo, exceeded its target of $1,00,000 by 203 per cent. Towards the end of the year, two more successful campaigns were posted by Mindhelix and SectorQube, both incubated at Startup Village, raising close to $1,20,000 each through the popular crowd-funding platform, Kickstarter.
Startup Village was also the driving force behind the government coming out with the first ever draft innovation and start-up policy to rein in the drain of talent from the State. The policy likely to be finalised soon will focus on creating infrastructure to support entrepreneurship and incubators.
While it had won accolades since its inception, Startup Village started making an impression outside the State as a model in entrepreneurship promotion in 2014. Its first office outside Kerala opened at Visakhapatnam in September and has attracted more than 125 incubation requests. More States such as Madhya Pradesh has also evinced interest in the model. Startup Village also set up its second office in Kerala at UL Cyber Park in Kochikode in October.
