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Why TiEcon is not just about fostering entrepreneurship

by AV George

Entrepreneurship has not really been a popular word in Kerala. We have seen time and again in the past the difficulties of those who embrace self-employment avenues and start new businesses. The entire stakeholder community – the government, the academia and the society have never taken a positive and nurturing view, towards entrepreneurship. It is not a single issue which can be pin-pointed and addressed. The good students have been goaded to pick careers in engineering, medicine, banks et.al. Starting a business has been viewed as the option of a ‘poor student’ who could not come out with flying colours in his school or college.

This view also synchs with a society where we have not traditionally promoted entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur has been viewed as the unscrupulous, rapacious and materialistic person who will go to any extent to fill in his coffers and often doing severe and heinous activities to hurt the society at large.

This is changing. What IT has done for businesses is that it broad down barriers for people to start businesses. No more was huge capital or a lineage in business – a hindrance. The clichéd picture of a ‘out of garage business’ is not a pipe dream but the actual story of many a great entrepreneur including the celebrated Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs.  This has also given the youth of today the courage to dream.

In Kerala, this has created nothing short of another Cambrian explosion – referring to the part in the history of the world where a plethora of micro and macro organisms, flora and fauna came up. The Startup Village has showed the potential of our youth and how they can be encouraged to do things themselves and create wealth and jobs.

In this context, what the TiEcon is done is to further fuel the environment. In the first TiEcon in 2012, the word ‘entrepreneurship’ became an important social transmission topic and word of mouth. An average Malayali who shares more than 16000 words in a day , added another word to the millions of conversations going around. These messages spread like wildfire and went viral. TiEcon helped funnel ideas and triggered an environment where the business ambitions moved from top of the mind to tip of the tongue to visible palpable action. Suddenly entrepreneurship became what economists call social currency. It became fashionable, interesting and cool to look at starting businesses.

Our ‘My story’ sessions are broader narratives that wrap stories of people who took the plunge. We have seen these stories becoming popular even through idle chatter. Our constant message of fostering entrepreneurship becomes integral and valuable through the TiEcons , where thousands get together to share and celebrate success. These stories are also textbooks of discernible evidence on what worked. At the end of the day ,TiEcon is about , as Steve Jobs said, an enhanced user experience’, for anyone who dares to dream and to follow that dream ….