A novel self-evaluation instrument for startup incubators

Following Startup India’s designation of Tamil Nadu as the “best performer state” for building a robust startup ecosystem, the state has developed an extensive framework to evaluate and improve the maturity of its incubators.

This self-assessment instrument assesses and improves the efficacy and influence of the state’s incubation centers. With more than 120 incubation centers to support them, the state is home to over 8,000 companies.

At the Tamil Nadu Startup Incubators Summit, which StartupTN organized in Chennai on Thursday, MSME Minister TM Anbarasan introduced the “Tamil Nadu Incubators Maturity Model (TNIMM).” Attendees included Sivarajah Ramanathan, CEO of StartupTN, and Secretary for the MSME Department Archana Patnaik.

The maturity model-based approach of TNIMM is structured differently from the well-known ranking model, taking into account the variety of Tamil Nadu incubators with respect to location, financing, domain, and business model. According to Ramanathan, there are eight reform areas in total: knowledge and expertise, money, human resources, physical infrastructure, networking ecosystem, social effect, outcomes and outcome, and management and strategy.

A solid operational plan for a business incubator may be created using these eight reform areas, which are distributed throughout 77 key performance metrics.

These characteristics are used to evaluate the incubators on five maturity levels: aspirant, intermediate, competent, proficient, and expert. According to him, the age of incubators is divided into three categories for the assessment: under four years old, between four and eight years old, and above eight years old.