TiE Hyd to mentor startups in TS tier-2 cities

Hyderabad: All eyes on Hyderabad, as the well-evolved supportive ecosystem here is helping the startups, incubators, accelerators and startup enablers take forward business propositions. Now, it’s the right time for stakeholders of the startup ecosystem to focus on the growth of startups and entrepreneurs in tier-2 cities of Telangana, says newly appointed president of TiE Hyderabad.

Speaking to Bizz Buzz, Srini Chandupatla, also the Co-founder of Manjeera Digital Systems, pointed out that tier-2 cities of Telangana also have good talent and founders that have not been brought to the front. He proposed for a partnership with the State government for strategising on how the startups there can be brought to customers by providing them access to mentoring, funding, networking, and so on.

“What I am offering from Hyderabad Chapter is TiE being a platform to foster entrepreneurship we would help the government by collaborating with them to support tier-2 initiatives. It would be nice to focus more on tier-2 and tier-3 cities, but I am saying let us start with tier-2 first, and then we can go deeper. We can help tier-2 entrepreneurs as there is good number of big and real problems that we could address,” Chandupatla said.

He further said that TiE Hyderabad is willing to provide masterclasses, workshops, and networking that otherwise these tier-two startups would not have access to. On that front he said: “The government can start thinking about how to encourage startups in tier-2 cities and TiE Hyderabad as an organisation is happy to work with the government to make this happen seamlessly because TiE is all about fostering entrepreneurship. We will do this through providing mentoring support, a platform for networking, funding and education like holding masterclasses. The overall idea is to transform the startup ideas into businesses in tier-two cities.”

According to Chandupatla, who’s also an angel investor, the only way forward to increase the number of successful startups in Telangana is by encouraging entrepreneurship at an early stage. TiE Hyderabad holds programmes such as The Young Entrepreneurs, and TiE Grad, to seed the bug of entrepreneurship at very early stage starting from the high school (9th to 12th grade), followed by colleges and universities.

As the Silver Jubilee president of TiE Hyderabad, in its 25th year, Chandupatla aims to enhance the TiE brand by implementing and executing the initiatives and programmes planned for 2024, of which taking TiE’s initiative to tier-2 cities is one among those.

“We have taken our initiatives to the tier-2 cities, but we need a more structured programme and we are willing to do that along with the government support,” Chandupatla said adding that the support the government can provide TiE includes access to startup founders, local incubators, colleges/academia over there. Meanwhile, TiE can help mentor those startups to go to the next level by creating the right access to the investors and customers.

“Even if we get 10 good startups from each town, we can take them to the next level, from idea validation stage to building a prototype or minimal viable product, we can work with them and make sure that we create an impact. If the government has some seed money/fund that can be deployed to help startups build a prototype, this will encourage them,” he added.

In 2024, Chandupatla wants the focus to shift from Hyderabad to startups in tier-2 cities, who have all the possibility to grow and add GDP numbers to India’s economic growth, if nurtured well. These startups can lead to enhancing the quality of living of people there by creating more jobs in those cities, he added.

Our focus is more on tier-2 and tier-3 cities. But let’s start with tier-2 this year, and then we can go deeper. We can help tier-2 entrepreneurs as there is good number of big and real problems that we could address

-- Srini Chandupatla, president, TiE Hyderabad, tells Bizz Buzz