90 per cent of start-ups end up as failures in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: About 90 per cent of start-ups in the city fail due to lack of innovative ideas and proper marketing strategy. Hyderabad is at fourth position in start-up incubators with an eight per cent share in the country after Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi.

According to an estimation of ASSOCHAM, only 3 per cent of startups are successful and another 7 per cent are being considered as successful start-ups.

At present there are 10,000 recognised start-ups in the country out of which 800 are in Hyderabad. These recognised startups are working out of Telangana government’s project for incubators, the T-Hub.

Besides these, there are about nine times more start-ups that are working independently in Hyderabad and the success rate of these are almost the same as the recognised incubators.

Former chairman of NASSCOM and one of the directors of T-Hub, Mr B.V. Mohan Reddy, told DC that their target for ensuring success for start-ups was 18 months. “The T-Hub was launched in November, 2015 and a few startups have already tasted success,” he said, adding that 3 per cent of startups would be successful.

“Another 3 per cent have also succeeded in reaching their goals, but it needs more marketing. About 4 per cent more are also considered successful as the team members are getting the same amount as their previous salary as profits. We can’t say it is not a success,” he said.

He added that due to lack of innovative ideas, mentors and marketing, most start-ups were failing. “At T-Hub, we are encouraging failed start-ups to concentrate on new projects. Failure in a start-up is not really a failure. We provide them with a certificate recognising them as young entrepreneurs. In US, the team members of failed start-ups join their previous jobs again,” he said.

One start-up from Hyderabad was selected recently for Oracle’s accelerator programme along with four groups from other states. Two more start-ups from T-Hub got investments from various investors for innovative ideas and for their detailed project reports.

Wrong steps in building a product, poor teams, lack of innovative and unique propositions, failure in changing the direction of a project to meet the requirements of users, lack of advisors, delay in launching, delay in decision making, lack of business/marketing plans and underestimating competitors are the causes for the failure of start-ups.