The largest city of Gujarat, the seventh largest metropolitan of India and the best city to live in by The Times of India, Ahmedabad is indeed one of the best paces for entrepreneurs and startups as well.
Popularly called Amdavad, this city is a small storehouse of energy and motivation for people. Apart from dhokla, khandvi, khakhra and many other delicious food items whose names sound like missiles (greatly pointed out by Kareena Kapoor Khan), Ahmedabad has mentors, incubators and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM A) that provides an awesome well-entrenched ecosystem for entrepreneurship.
IIM A holds the record for producing the maximum number of entrepreneurs and startups. It has the access to some of the best facilities and mentors owing to the brilliant alumni that it produces. They can mentor aspiring entrepreneurs through talks, seminars and internship opportunities. IIM A has been trying to put in all their resources and facilities available into promoting entrepreneurship in Ahmedabad. The best part being IIM A is not alone in its efforts. It’s being constantly helped in this endeavour by institutions like the Mudra Institute of Communication, IIT Gandhinagar, National Institute of Design, National Institute of Fashion Technology and Nirma group of institutions as well.
Engineering, management and many other skills are required for running a startup and making it successful. By bits and pieces Ahmedabad is one of the best places for staying and learning to make a successful startup.
The Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) had organized the first Grow Gujarat Awards for Gujarat-based start-ups last year. Amit Karna, professor of strategic management at IIM A claimed that they got received than 250 entries and maximum of them were young lads of 20 or 21. It is pretty evident that many youths are already bitten by the start-up bug. CIIE is also promoting clean technologies and sustainable energy heavily. CIIE has already seen ideas coming from different sectors- Industrial IOT space, solar energy retail, ecommerce, healthcare, logistics and even from virtual reality segment. According to him, the start-up generation will take forward the Gujarati spirit of entrepreneurship. Sounds good.
One of the most important things that CIIE has said is that Ahmedabad produces many entrepreneurs but retains very few.
“Ahmedabad is a very good place to start but not the best place to scale up. Beyond a certain stage, you have to take a call and move to a larger city.”
Also Read: I am Bhubaneswar and I am the next startup destination
Why is it so?
The most common reason cited by Gujarat based start-ups is the need for good tech people which is easily available in other metropolitan cities like Delhi and Bangalore. Narendra Modi had taken quite many steps into promoting entrepreneurship culture in Gujarat and in Ahmedabad mainly but was not that successful owing to a few reasons:
Less of the right talent in Ahmedabad
As already mentioned before, many start-ups leave Ahmedabad owing to lack of good technical people. “There is a need of a holistic institution from where entrepreneurs can get the required knowledge about say, a particular domain, sector or new opportunity,” says Mitul Dadhania, Founder of WebChanakya. People simply don’t know what is what when it comes to tech. It has definitely improved over the years but has not been perfect ever. They need more guidance and mentoring in this regard.
Less of the communication among entrepreneurs
Not everyone at Ahmedabad can pull off a Jethalal. From the past history, we can say that though maximum people here are well educated but still many of them fail during their pitching sessions. “Client Communication is one of the biggest challenges for the start-ups in Gujarat. With the lack of knowledge of English, and advanced soft skills, they struggle with day to day communication issues,” says Ritesh.
Less of support by authorities
Not from the Government but from the authorities. Entrepreneurship mainly attracts the youths but if they do not get the required help from their colleges then it gets really difficult for them to balance everything. Being a drop-out is not always the best option for a person living in India where we tend to live more for the society than ourselves.
“In case of student entrepreneurs in Kerala there is a recent policy change with regards to over grant of 20-30% relaxation in attendance at colleges. Such initiatives are missing from the scene here,” says Wishaysh.
Know more about the initiatives that are taken by the Kerala governement to promote and nurture the spirit of entrepeneurship by clicking here.
The aforementioned reasons are the main difficulties that an entrepreneur from Ahmedabad faces. In spite of all these, Ahmedabad has produced many entrepreneurs and will produce more and sustain them as well to prove itself as ‘The Land of Entrepreneurs’.
What are your views regarding the entrepreneurship spirit in cities like Ahmedabad? Let us know by commenting below.
