Hiccups for Entrepreneurs, Investors in Secondary Cities Common issues faced by the entrepreneurial society in tier two cities might be simpler than you'd expect
By Sneha Banerjee •
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At LetsIgnite, a conference conducted for angel investors and start-ups in Bengaluru, investors and entrepreneurs discussed on some of the common issues faced by the entrepreneurial society in tier two cities.
The panel discussion, titled Bound to Rise, Emergence of Investors in Secondary locations, included Munish Jauhar, founder & CEO of GreyCell Technologies, Dr Jayasankar Prasad CEO Kerala Startup Mission, Abhishek Rungta Founder& CEO of Indus Net Technologies, Munir Thakor, Founder & Director, Silicon Computech and the discussion was moderated Ravi Gururaj Founder and CEO of QikPod.
Some of the concerns that came from respective locations were –
Kolkata
The biggest challenge in the Kolkata ecosystem was availability of good talent. Even though the city houses some really good ideas, it's in dire need of a good accelerator to give them a defined growth plan. The city also lacks interaction opportunities of like-minded people and communication between sectors.
Ahmedabad
Start-ups are a fairly new phenomena in Ahmedabad, where people are more familiar with "dhanda" (business) and not entrepreneurship. The problem is with the ecosystem here where not many venture capitalists come to Ahmedabad. We need to have a mechanism to bring start-ups and VCs to tier 2 cities.
Ahmedabad has the advantage of being a fairly cheap and safe city and all it needs is a good structure and a success story to motivate start-up culture.
Kerala
It's very unusual and difficult for people to shift to the start-up space after working in another field for several years. People working in government and private sectors find it difficult to get into angel investing. That learning is yet to be inculcated here.
Chandigarh
One needs to inculcate the idea that an entrepreneur and investors need to work together to get amicable results.
However, the panel agreed upon the fact that with the help of government support and communication channels between bigger cities and secondary cities, these cities have the potential to give rise to a healthy start-up culture.
