Guest editorial
Thillai Rajan Annamalai, Priya Nair Rajeev
2022
Journal of Indian Business Research
there has been a significant policy impetus to encourage start-ups and develop a supportive ecosystem for start-ups and innovation in India. The supportive stance of the national government has also influenced the various state governments to enact similar policies. The accommodative policy environment along with a convergence of various factors has resulted in India emerging as the World's third-largest start-up ecosystem (InvestIndia, 2022) . Underlining this was the declaration made by the
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... ime Minister of India to mark 16 January as the National Start-up Day to percolate the start-up culture at the grassroots level (The Hindu, 2022). A recent publication (Thillai Rajan et al., 2021) provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the Indian start-up ecosystem. In tandem, the rapid growth in the number of start-ups and investment flow has garnered the interest of research scholars and academia. From setting up purely action and implementation-oriented centres such as incubators and innovation labs, the Indian universities have also started to focus on academic research and knowledge creation in the areas of start-ups and venture capital. The Centre for Research on Start-ups and Risk Financing (CREST) set up at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras is an example. The growing interest on academic research in this area has also led to the formation of a Pan India academic consortium, namely, the innovation, venturing and entrepreneurship in India network (iVEIN). This special issue on "Start-ups, Innovation and Venturing" is, therefore, not only relevant but also timely. The special issue consists of four papers, encompassing different, but very pertinent topics to the Indian start-up ecosystem. Most start-ups need external capital, and more often than not, early source of funding is provided by angel investors. The first paper by Niroopa Rani Annamalaisami focuses on the differences between angel investors who invest in preseed and seed-stage funding rounds. Based on an analysis of 732 angel investments made by 405 investors during 2014-2018, the author finds that angels with more industry-specific experience made a higher proportion of investment in seed-stage ventures. Seed-stage ventures attracted investors from larger cities, whereas the pre-seed stage had higher investors from smaller cities. Though the investment size was smaller, the extent of syndication was greater in pre-seed stage investments. The second paper by Navaneetha Krishnan, Ganesh and Rajendran focuses on start-up success. It is well known that mortality rates of start-ups are high. Increasing the success rates of start-ups, therefore, has been a topic of interest for both researchers and practitioners. Based on a survey of 51 specialists, the authors analyse various failures that start-ups in India were exposed to and propose interventions based on management accounting tools (MAT) to address these risks. The authors also go on to conclude that failures of start-ups can be addressed by implementing a combination of MAT. Furthermore, the most effective combination of MAT for a start-up was contingent upon various factors such as the firm's size, culture, leadership style, the operating sector, funding stage, valuation and preferred growth model. The third paper by James Dominic and Arun Kumar Gopalaswamy focuses on a subject that has immense practical importance, namely, venture exits and returns. The authors analyse the various factors that affect venture exits and returns, such as investment
doi:10.1108/jibr-03-2022-365
fatcat:lamrrp2bvfdt7nkn2ttd7z75eu