The world is under the clutches of coronavirus. Every sector, including entrepreneurship, bears the brunt of the crisis. However, overcoming it is inevitable. Dr Saji Gopinath, CEO of Kerala Startup Mission, says KSUM has adopted a three-pronged strategy for the same.
The first level includes identifying various challenges faced by startups in the current scenario and lessen their burden by allowing additional grants, low-cost loans and supports like that.
In the second level, they check if some of the startups can be pivoted to meet the requirements of the government, especially in the COVID fight. A few startups are already on board to provide support to the government at various levels such as communication, product development and telemedicine.
Startup mission uses the third level to ensure that startups use the crisis period to fine-tune their business models and also to ensure that the employees at home can be educated via webinars where experts from across the globe communicate. They will focus on ways for continuing the business during the lockdown and scaling up after the phase.
We believe that startups would use this time to reflect on their products and services. Any calamity is an opportunity and if they find an opportunity now, then they can tide over the crisis, he said.
KSUM has also found that there are startup products that can be used to mitigate the crisis. Some companies have come up with interesting solutions. Some of them are already being adopted. Others are getting addressed. Startup mission has created a website called breakcorona.in where we invite ideas from startups which can actually be applied to fight this corona. These are the current activities of Kerala Startup Mission to help startups. We will adopt more models in the future, he added.
