Kerala motivates its home-grown money

Kochi: It was a swayamvaram with a difference - and a high-tech one at that.   Twenty startups - 15 based in Kerala - wooed a galaxy of seasoned angel investors from all over India during the third Seeding Kerala event in Kochi  on Tuesday.  They were looking for  early stage funding at an event organised  by the Kerala State Startup Mission (KSUM), with  India's largest online investment platform, Let's Venture, and the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDSC).

But uniquely for such events, the Kochi  get-together, which one visiting investor called a 'speed dating session,' had as its centrepiece a two-hour-long 'master class' where three veteran investors --  Revathy Ashok, Ravi Kaushik and Shivam Shah - explained the art and science of early stage investing  to High Net-worth Individuals  (HNIs) and potential investors on the stage.

"It is the first time we are trying to motivate Kerala's own investors," explained the state's IT secretary M. Sivasankar. "Over three investor meets, we have seen sharply increased  interest in the investor ecosystem in  funding Kerala startups.   When we first created 50:50 funds, with the state contributing an equal share with investor consortia, we never  expected this level of enthusiasm," he said.

Currently Kerala had four startup  funds in play, contributing a corpus of Rs 15 crore each, but  investors have committed  multiple times this amount taking the four funds to a total of over Rs 1000 crore.

 The state  had  expertise in  fields like space science - thanks to a large  group of experts flowing from ISRO and other Kerala -based aerospace  institutions - and this is seeing significant startup traction, Mr Sivasankar added.

The 20 startups which made their case to investors were the finalists selected from over 300 applications country-wide.   The Kerala -based entrants were   all incubated in the  facilities  supported or directly run by the KSUM.But potential investors were served a dose of reality by angel investor Revathy Ashok who anchored the master class:  "This is a game of building, not just picking winners. Be prepared to wait of 5-8 years before you can find an exit," said Revathy.

But in Kochi on Tuesday, the  over 100 investors   did not have exits so much on their minds - but an entry, hopefully profitable , into the state's young, new startup ecosystem.