New self-assessment tool for startup incubators

Chennai: After being awarded the title of ‘Best Performing State’ in building a strong startup ecosystem by Startup India, Tamil Nadu has prepared a comprehensive framework to assess and enhance the maturity of incubators in the state.

This self-assessment tool for the incubation centers present in the state evaluates and upgrades the effectiveness and impact of the centres. The state has more than 8,000 startups and is equipped with more than 120 incubation centers to nurture these startups.

Known as the ‘Tamil Nadu Incubators Maturity Model (TNIMM)’, it was launched by MSME Minister TM Anbarasan at the Tamil Nadu Startup Incubators Summit organized by StartupTN in Chennai on Thursday. MSME Department Secretary Archana Patnaik and StartupTN Mission Director and CEO Shivraj Ramanathan were present.
Given the diversity of Tamil Nadu incubators in terms of location, funding, domain and business model, TNIMM has been designed as a maturity model based approach which is quite different from the well-known ranking models. It consists of eight reform areas including management and strategy; Knowledge and expertise; finance; human resource; physical infrastructure; Networking Ecosystem; Social impact and consequences and consequences, Ramanathan said.

These eight improvement areas spanning 77 key performance indicators serve as the platform for a business incubator to build a strong operational strategy.
Based on these parameters, incubators are evaluated at five maturity levels starting from aspirational, intermediate, competent, proficient and expert. For evaluation, the age of the incubators is classified as up to four years of age; He said, from four years to eight years and more than eight years.