Corporate social leader, TV Mohandas Pai has announced the formation of Mangaluru Angels, an angel fund to encourage Mangaloreans to start entrepreneurial units in their hometown rather than go to cities like Bangalore or Mysore.This will encourage startups to build a base in the city before branching out elsewhere.
The incubator will energize entrepreneurs to meet, ideate and create business models, regardless of the medium. It will also provide them with facilities to nurture their dream, and the products that will be born in the facility will be marketed.
Speaking on the development, Pai said, ” It is high time a community of startups emerges in the coastal city. We’ll bring in investors (angels), provide budding entrepreneurs with mentors, and turn their entrepreneurial dreams into reality. Wannabe entrepreneurs may fail with a business idea but they should start taking risks.”
Sandeep Shenoy, banker and chief mentor of Prerna initiative of the World Konkani Centre has been given the charge of overseeing the setting up of the incubator, which is based on the idea that the next billion dollar company will emerge from a Tier 2 city.
He said that once a suitable incubator space is found, serious business ideas will be vetted and a viable business idea would ideally receive seed money between $50,000 and $1,00,000. He added that efforts were on to set up an incubator space of 2,000 sq ft with entrepreneurs paying for power and water.
Presently the Chairman of Manipal Global Education, TV Mohandas Pai holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bangalore and a bachelor’s degree in law (LLB) from Bangalore University. He had recently invested an undisclosed amount in cloud based startup CimplyFive along with Wipro veteran Suresh Senapaty.
