Startup failure rate is gradually reducing in the country, awareness is needed: STPI
Panaji: While asserting the rate of failures of Startups in the country is slowly reducing, Director General of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Arvind Kumar expressed need to create more awareness about what the government is doing to promote the Startups.
Kumar said that the awareness campaign is very much required amongst the youth about the Startups. “I go to number of engineering colleges, they don’t know anything about the startups, they don’t know about the STPI, they don’t know anything about what country and government is doing,” he commented.
The STPI DG was in Goa to address the Future Tech Leadership Forum Goa 2023 on Saturday organised by the stakeholders in the state’s IT industry.
Kumar said that there should be a subject on Entrepreneurship for the students when they are in the 12th standard where the product cycle should be explained and they should be made into Job producers and not the job seekers.
He said that STPIs Directors are going to various colleges and giving lectures to the youngsters about the Startups and also how to get funds for that.
“I think awareness is happening but it has to be accelerated,” Kumar added.
The STPI Director General said that they have not done any study on the failures of the Startups, but there are studies which claim that the rate in India is one against ten.
“Failure is a part of start up eco system not just only in India but also in the developed part of the world. Our country has just started the journey of startups, so naturally we will fail more, compared to those countries which have started ten years back,” he said.
Talking about the Centres of Entrepreneurship created by the STPI, Kumar said that such initiatives are working to reduce the failure rate.
“The COEs have chief mentors who are authority on the particular subject. They guide the Startups in the COEs and do hand holding. When something (start up idea) is ready, we call Venture Capitalists, Fund Managers who see the product and see if they can invest in it,” he said.
Kumar said that such a step reduces the rate of failures. “The failures of Startups are also reducing with the passage of time,” he said.
