State startup ecosystem most vibrant: CM

Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday inaugurated the two-day ‘Huddle Global’, Asia’s largest tech conclave, organized by Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) at The Leela Raviz, Kovalam.
During his inaugural address he defined Kerala as the state that has built the most vibrant startup ecosystem in the country. He further said that an emerging technology startup hub will be set up in the capital to further strengthen the incubation infrastructure and support innovation programmes.
Noting that the state offered the best opportunities for a wide array of enterprises for startups in various domains like IT, VT (virtualization technology), and food processing, the chief minister said a major initiative to connect tourism industry with startup ecosystem is in the offing.
“The government envisions having 15,000 startups and two lakh jobs. This financial year alone the state has witnessed creation of one lakh small and medium enterprises,” he said.
The chief minister said that by bringing a wide range of global audiences together, Huddle Global has been able to introduce Kerala’s startup ecosystem to the world, setting it on a trajectory of accelerated growth.
At the event he also released the 5th Kerala startup ecosystem report and presented the ‘pride of Kerala award’ to Genrobotics, which developed the sewer cleaning robot Bandicoot to phase out manual scavenging. Vimal Govind MK, co-founder, Genrobotics, received the award.