T.N. Startup Summit: ‘An idea is built, iterated, and refined by students before going to market’

T.N. Startup Summit: ‘An idea is built, iterated, and refined by students before going to market’

An idea is not just an idea; students build on it, iterate, learn, and build on it again, said Dr. Ananth Kumar, Associate Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, at the Tamil Nadu Startup Summit 2025 in Chennai on Thursday (April 24, 2025).

Speaking during a session, ‘Fireside chat: Nurturing startups from campus to the global scale – building entrepreneurial ecosystems in universities’, he said, “This sort of cycle helps students grow, as the idea goes through multiple iterations and, at some point, becomes ready for the market.” He was in conversation with R. Sujatha, Deputy Editor, The Hindu.

Recalling the inception of incubator cells, he said that he and his colleagues had visited many incubation cells across the country. “We then worked on our strengths, as that is the only way to build an active and growing incubator. The strength of SRM is its diversity in terms of programmes, research, and development, as well as people, who are our key strength,” he added.

Narrating an incident about developing a motor for an e-bike, he said, “It takes over four years to nurture a deep-tech product, bring it to market, and turn it into an investable company. If the founders have persistence, passion, and the resilience to stay the course, they will succeed. We want to focus on such startups.”

Stating that they are focusing on setting up a Centre of Excellence for Rural Technology, he said that it would come up on the new campus, as it is connected to 100 villages. “We want to focus on making it an innovation hub on rural technology and agri technology,” he added.

Pointing out the differences between the early days of Silicon Valley and the startup ecosystem in India, he said there was access to risk capital, or patient capital, where investors were willing to wait. “So, the best innovators went there and pitched ideas. They received the capital and delivered. Statistics show that over 30% of Silicon Valley startups have Indian founders. Now, in India, we have created a lot of resources for risk capital — from government grants to angel investors. The problem is not in finding funding, but in finding the right problem,” he added.