Hyderabad fares poorly when it comes to start-up culture

Hyderabad: Hyderabad is still in the warming-up stage of the start-up eco-system as it drew relatively weak results in cities leading in technological innovations across the globe. Despite the IT department focussing on promoting start-ups, technological innovations are not coming from Hyderabad.

Even though India is at third place for developing disruptive technology breakthroughs which will have a global impact, only Bengaluru was in the top 10 list of cities being seen as a leading technology innovation hub over the next four years.

In 2017, the country added 1,000 start-ups, taking the total number of technology start-ups to nearly 5,200. However, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai are the three key entrepreneurial hubs in India comprising 80 per cent of total start-ups, according to KPMG’s report on Global technology innovation hubs.

About one per cent of tech leaders ranked Hyderabad among the three cities are expected to become leading tech hub, while Bengaluru drew 10 per cent and Mumbai two. While Chinese and Americans participants believed that their country leads in potential for disruptive technology, a majority of Indian respondents ranked the United States, followed by Bengaluru.

Entrepreneurs opine that if a person says he or she wants to build something like Instagram, no one in the Hyderabad eco-system would support or believe that entrepreneur.

An entreprenuer who is relocating start-up from Hyderabad said, “We’ve a start-up community and ecosystem, but concept start-ups are not encouraged. Innovation is happening only at application level and not technological level. We are a concept start-up and from my experience so far, this product if developed from Hyderabad will not have good market.”

Being in start-up capitals will help them market themselves better to customers and venture capitalists. Often start-ups are eliminated due to the lack of headstart and talent availability. At times the onus lies on the venture capitalist to relocate the startup.

Another entrepreneur from a Hyderabad-based start-up on condition of anonymity said, “There are only handful of venture capitalists who have offices in Hyderabad and most of them are locals. There is hardly any optimistic attitude towards disruption. Often investors tend to see growth in other markets even if it is home-grown start-up and ask them to relocate.”

Meanwhile, the chief information officer received the top global rank followed by the chief innovation officer as the function most responsible for moving innovation initiatives forward among mid-to-large size enterprises, as per the survey.

The Telangana state government has appointed Mr Phanindra Sama, who co-founded the bus ticketing company RedBus and serial entrepreneur, as chief innovation officer. However, the innovation cell has been set up to promote innovation at the grassroot level and this needs to be at startup level as well pushing disruptive innovations, said an entrepreneur.