From a Technopark incubator to the State nodal agency: how Kerala Startup Mission works

Background

Kerala Startup Mission lists Huddle Global among its flagship events, so the body that runs the State's startup work is worth setting out. The Mission is the nodal agency of the Government of Kerala for entrepreneurship development and incubation, and the implementing body for the Kerala Technology Startup Policy. It was founded in 2006, when Technopark started a business incubation centre called T-TBI; the next year it became the first non academic Technology Business Incubator to be recognised by DST, and in 2014 the State designated it the nodal agency for startups. Kerala was the first State in the country to launch a startup policy. The Mission has since received DPIIT Top Performer and Best Performer awards and a UBI Global award as the best public policy accelerator. Its own figures, counting its sector-specific partner organisations along with it, put the ecosystem at more than 8000 registered startups, more than 10 lakh square feet of incubation space, more than 60 incubators and more than 550 mini incubation centres across Kerala. Its office is at G3B, Thejaswini, Technopark, Trivandrum.