T Takes Startup Ranking Race With Pinch Of Salt | Hyderabad News

HYDERABAD: Telangana may have moved two rankings up to emerge as challenger to ‘Best Performer’ states like Karnataka, Gujarat and Meghalaya in the States’ Startup Rankings 2021 that were released by the Centre on Monday, but the Telangana government is taking these rankings with a pinch of salt.
For those puzzled at Meghalaya being ranked a rung above Telangana, it may be pertinent to mention that Telangana was judged in Category A, where states with population of over one crore were ranked, while states and UTs with less than one crore population like Meghalaya were judged under Category B.

Telangana ITE&C and industries principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan said the state government does not take these rankings seriously because of the sudden ups and downs in the rankings despite states not doing anything different.
“In one year we were shown in the second from bottom category – ‘aspiring leader’ – and suddenly we have been put in the second from top category. But there is nothing different that we have done or introduced just for the sake of rankings,” he said.
“Whatever we have been doing for the last 6-7 years, the same thing is going on in the same way. No single change has been brought about, so we don’t understand how by doing the same things suddenly you get ‘0’ or suddenly you get high (scores). So, we don’t care about these rankings at all,” Ranjan added.
The shocker for Telangana was a score of `0’ in the mentorship support parameter though it boasts of a network of over 140 registered mentors, as the report states. Telangana scored 100th percentile in three out of the seven parameters on which states were judged – institutional support, incubation support as well as capacity building of enablers.
Shantha Thoutam, chief innovation officer, Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC), pointed out that that while there are multiple action points and the framework has different aspects on which the state gets feedback, one reason for the poor score on mentorship could be the inability of DPIIT to get feedback on this count.
“Something is missing there. We have to assess why they gave a 0 in mentorship. States submit the data but they (DPIIT) also back-check on the feedback by calling startups and beneficiaries directly. It is not easy to catch hold of startups and you need to make multiple calls. For collecting feedback DPIIT usually appoints agencies to call up startups, who may not be responding to unknown numbers.”
She said TSIC has been working on creating a mindset of innovation and entrepreneurship across districts right down to the village level. “Such kind of activities are not happening in other states. Those aspects might not be there in the framework,” she added.
T-Hub CEO M Srinivas Rao said while much has been done, a lot remains to be done on various aspects towards building a stronger ecosystem – more collaboration between stakeholders, focus on fund flow and access to institutional capital, leveraging academia and increasing industry-startup interaction.