Mangaluru: In a positive turnaround, Mangaluru’s startup scene is booming as local and external investors pivot from real estate to tech innovation. Once struggling for support, coastal startups now attract significant backing from angel investors and high-net-worth individuals, marking a new era of entrepreneurial growth.The startups from the coastal region struggled – either raised funds through bootstrapping, borrowed from friends or relatives, or took bank loans. However, the tide turned over the past three years as Mangaluru witnessed a remarkable shift. Local and other angel investors and high-net-worth individuals, once focused mainly on real estate, began backing homegrown innovation.Driving this change are funding initiatives like state and Union govt programmes such as Elevate, BIRAC and others. Most importantly, TiE Mangaluru and the Silicon Beach Programme are nurturing young entrepreneurs with guidance and exposure. TiE Mangaluru has a six-month mentoring programme for selected startups. Recently, Bolpu Mangaluru also started under the leadership of Dakshina Kannada MP Capt Brijesh Chowta. Adding to the momentum, Karnataka’s Elevate programme recently selected 87 startup ideas outside Bengaluru, the majority of those from Mangaluru, from 400 applications, signalling growing recognition for Mangaluru’s startup ecosystem.Johnson Tellis, co-founder of InUnity, said that he started his startup through self-funding. “The right ideas get funding from angel investors as well as grants from the govt and mentorship. This was not the case earlier. There was a fear of whether to invest or not. For example, a deep tech startup would take at least 5-7 years to make significant growth, and it does involve risk,” he said.Shashir Shetty, chief growth officer at Niveus Solutions (Part of NTT Data), said that before TiE Mangaluru, there was both a lack of information for startups as well as investors from the region. “Now, both are educated–startups and investors. Recently, one of the agritech startups was able to raise Rs 50 lakh in just 48 hours, and another startup raised similar funding in 3-4 days. In total, the information gap is reduced, and the startup ecosystem is seeing a boost,” Shetty stressed.The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) unit in Mangaluru, which aims to promote entrepreneurship, has helped 75 startups from the region, according to Rohith Bhat, founding president, TiE Mangaluru. He said that out of 75, about 50 startups have been helped with funding from govt programmes, and the rest received equity funding from angel investors in recent years.
