A cross-section of members of the Nattukottai Chettiar community, commonly known as Nagarathars, is planning to launch a funding platform to encourage entrepreneurship among the community.
Nagarathars are known for their business acumen and have created successful business houses in India over the past 150 years. Some of the well-known business houses include the Murugappa Group, the Chettinad Group, AVM Studios, and the MA Chidambaram Group.
“Till the middle of the 20th century many of the Nagarathars were actively involved in some form of business, and not many were in employment. But with the passage of time, people have gradually shifted from entrepreneurship to employment,” Chockalingam Annamalai, who hails from the community and is now a banker in UAE, said.
In an attempt to reverse the trend, members from the community gathered in Singapore for the first time in 2013 and brainstormed about ways to bring people back to entrepreneurship through an initiative called International Business Conference of Nagarathars (IBCN). Since then it is being held as a biennial conference. The second edition was held in Coimbatore in 2015 and the next would be held in April this year in Dubai, which Mr. Annamalai is spearheading as chairman.
“As we progressed in our quest to revive the entrepreneurial spirit in the community, one of the things we realised was that funding was an essential need for entrepreneurs. That is going to be one of the key elements in the Dubai event,” according to Mr. Annamalai.
The community is planning a Fund called ‘Nagarathars Fund’, which would be deployed to fund people with ideas. The fund would take various shapes like angel funding, crowd funding, venture capital and would have one main sponsor from the community and the others will join in, he added.
He also said an online system would be established to connect the investors and entrepreneurs to ensure credibility and reliability.
