Startup Village receives 527 applications in March

City-based incubator Startup Village received a record 527 applications in March from young entrepreneurs keen to set up technology businesses.

The near doubling of the number of applications over one month comes as the mobile-Internet technology business incubator - set up under public-private partnership mode with strong support from the central and state governments - gears up to mark its second anniversary this month.

In February, 286 would-be entrepreneurs expressed interest in signing up with the incubation programme at Startup Village --a milestone easily surpassed in March, a press release said. 

Startup Village Chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar said the surge in the number of applicants was reflective of a socio-cultural change taking place in Kerala, as young people become more willing to take risks and chase their dreams and build a new world with new products that drive the future of humanity.

The Startup Village has helped reinforce the idea that it was all right to take risks to bring an idea to life and to create an ecosystem where failure is seen a prerequisite to learning, he said.

The total number of applications at Startup Village touched 2,269 by March 31. The incubator currently supports 600 Start-ups, out of which 216 have been started by students.

Thirty-four of the supported companies are physically incubated at the Village's campus at Kinfra Park in Kalamassery.

The success stories of companies nurtured by incubators such as Startup Village and Technopark TBI have played a key role in driving the entrepreneurship movement in Kerala. And the state government has actively promoted it, particularly through policy frameworks and infrastructure support. 

When Startup Village was set up in 2012, its Chief Mentor Kris Gopalakrishnan, the Executive Vice Chairman Infosys, predicted that the incubator will change the industrial climate in Kerala.

"I believe that Kris, with his visionary foresight, was right in calling Startup Village a game-changer," Startup Village CEO Sijo Kuruvilla George said.

"With the ecosystem we have here currently and our plans for the future, we hope to achieve our goal of becoming one among the top five destinations in the world to create a Startup," he said.