Hyd emerges as a Start-up destination

But what essentially are start-ups? A company is called a start-up if its founder has a novel business idea, and works only towards achieving it with no intent of protecting the company in the future.

According to the Forbes Magazine, “If you are generating revenues below USD 20 million, have less than 80 employees and remain resolutely in control of the company you started; you’re likely running a start-up. Likewise, if you’ve just set up a tiny for-profit enterprise and are intent on it becoming big enough to take over the world – even if you’re still working from your bedroom – you’re probably a start-up founder.”

An incubation centre called ‘Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CEI)’ has been initiated at IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology) Hyderabad in order to promote start-ups. About 40 companies are part of this incubation centre. The projects that aim to cater to the IT sector are mentored and provided with facilities by the centre.

Manoj Surya, manager of CEI, said, “Young software engineers who want to develop apps and other services for huge IT firms are approaching us. We provide these youngsters with all the necessary help till the completion of their project. Currently there are 40 start-ups that have enrolled with us.”

One such successful entrepreneur based in the city is Aditya Vuchi (30), the founder of an app called ‘Zippr’. With this app, a person can avoid all the misunderstanding that occurs while explaining their address to someone. One can tag their location on Google maps by linking a ten digit alphanumeric code.

"The Google map with geo-tagged location can then be provided to logistics companies, ambulance services, food chains or e-commerce firms. They can identify the exact address with just a code on any smartphone," said Aditya.

The startup will charge organisations that make use of their service. Numerous startup companies are budding across the city taking inspiration from successful entrepreneurs.

Sahitya Vardhan, MD of Huvi technologies said, “Our start-up aims at developing responsive web designing using the latest software tools. Usually a conventional website has to be designed differently to work in different devices, but all those websites that are developed using our responsive designing technique, work efficiently in all the devices with the same design.”

While many entrepreneurs are confident of their initiatives, Pallav, founder and CEO of Sadda Haq, expressed concern as investors are not keen to finance start-ups in Hyderabad.

“Numerous start-up companies are coming up in the city. But due to several reasons investors are not coming forward to encourage these startups. Hence many are establishing their start-ups in cities like Pune, Bengaluru and Kerala. Kerala has become an attractive destination because of the founding of ‘Startup Village’ to promote small scale business activities.”