An Analysis of the Start-Up Environment in Madhya Pradesh: Building the Business Ecosystem for Start-Ups

Abstract

India ranks third in the global startup ecosystem in the world incubating more than 50,000 startups and witnessing 15% YoY growth per year. Being a center of innovation and skilled labor, Indian startups have attracted investments from all over the world. This paper aims at exploring the trends that are driving the growth in the Indian startup ecosystem.The state of Madhya Pradesh, often referred to as the heart of India, has, attracted investments in a diverse mix of sectors ranging from heavy engineering, information technology, electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM), Telecommunications and automobiles. As a result, one of the interesting aspects about the state is the abundance of skilled technical workforce, thereby providing a tailor-made platform to promote startups in the state. In order to ignite the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation for people in the state and converting ideas into potential businesses, the state government, in 2016, outlined a startup policy to provide an enabling environment to achieve this objective. Like many emerging ecosystems, Madhya Pradesh also has a culture of copying business models of big successes and applying the model for the smaller markets in the state. This shows that the state has an aspiration for entrepreneurship but innovation is still at a nascent stage. But this does not mean there is no glimmer of hope, some mavericks have indeed broken the mould to build out-of-the-box ideas into businesses.