START-UP PERFORMANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY IN KERALA: THE ANALYSIS OF ECO SYSTEM ENABLERS, CHALLENGES AND POLICY SUPPORT WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF START-UP MISSION

Start-ups are critical in economic development, innovationand creation of jobs. Start-ups need a favourable start-up ecosystem to improve their performance and sustainability in the long term. This paper will consider the presence or role of the start-up ecosystem in determining the performance and saliency of start-ups within the state of Kerala through the nature of ecosystem enablers, issues and policy support as part of the Kerala Start-up Mission. The research design is quantitative research design, which is founded on primary data gathering of 120 start-up founders and managers who are running their businesses in Kerala through a structured questionnaire. To determine the most important dimensions of start-up ecosystem support, EFA was adopted, and Multiple Regression Analysis was adopted to analyse the effects of the dimensions on start-up performance. The factor analysis has revealed five broad dimensions of ecosystem support, which are the Financial and Funding Support, Incubation and Infrastructure Support, Mentorship and Networking Support, Policy and Institutional Support, and Skill Development and Training Support. Good internal consistency was achieved by reliability analysis with all factors. The regression results however showed that the entire model was not significant meaning that there was no significant direct effect of ecosystem support factors to start-up performance in the current study. The results indicate that although Kerala has an established start-up ecosystem with the help of the Kerala Start-up Mission, the sole support through the ecosystem might not have a significant impact on the start-up performance and survivability. The analysis of the study demonstrates that additional outcome-oriented, more targeted, need-based support mechanisms should be considered, and that more attention should be paid to the capabilities of firms and factors that are related to the market. The research helps to have a better grasp of the dynamics of start-up ecosystem in Kerala and provides ideas to policy-makers, support organizations and subsequent researchers.