• Kerala Startup Mission partners with Germany’s NXTGN Startup Factory to build a world-class deep-tech startup ecosystem through technology, product development, and mentorship
• Collaboration leverages German research IP, capital, and corporates with Indian talent and market, enabling startups to take advanced research to real-world use cases
• MoU targets creation of 300 deep-tech startups across Kerala and Germany, backed by funding support, talent pipelines, and strong institutional collaboration

Kerala Startup Mission, the state government's nodal agency for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities, has joined hands with NXTGN Startup Factory of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, in the creation of a world-class ecosystem for deep-tech startups in Kerala through collaboration in technology, product development, and mentorship.

NXTGN Startup Factory is a consortium of major German universities, with corporate partners and a venture capital fund support of close to Rs 10,000 crore. “This consortium of universities has a lot of advanced research IP lying with them. The idea is to see if we can access it through our collaboration and let our startups refine that IP through use cases”, says Anoop Ambika, CEO, KSUM.

Saying that India is good at application level development as compared to basic research Ambika hopes to take something which is already on the shelf. "Let's say give me the technology, lets create a startup, you take equity in that startup, lets refurbish this research and take it to a next technology readiness level (TRL) level and let there be some use cases", Ambika said. "India is a huge market and Germans are very good at material science. So let's create something which is of value. India can be a great market. That is the opportunity that I see. So, on one side you have IP, capital and corporate association, and this side we have talent, and market. It is knowledge collaboration", Ambika added.

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A memorandum of understanding inked between KSUM and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, aims to develop around 300 startups in both Germany and Kerala, and the collaboration will facilitate funding and other support for deep tech startups.

A steering committee and a working group will be formed to carry forward the collaboration with participation of the government, the state's startup ecosystem, and the German startup ecosystem.

Most importantly, the partnership has made focused efforts to create a continuous talent pipeline from the leading institutions and colleges in Kerala, which would bring out innovations that will redefine the industrial ecosystem of Kerala, besides creating a lot of job opportunities. Kerala has close to 15,000 registered startups, of which 7,600 were approved by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.