A two-person startup can work out of a laptop and a coffee shop. A company with 60 people on payroll cannot. That is why, until recently, small towns like Manjeri rarely showed up on the list when an established firm looked to open a new office. That is starting to...
A one-year-old company with no balance sheet used to get the same form as a 20-year-old shop. Same paperwork, same waiting period, same blank stare when the founder said “we have no fixed assets, just a product.” That is starting to change in parts of...
Most founders who build something big move away from their hometown. Sabeer Nelli did the opposite. The Zil Money CEO built Silicon Jeri, a coworking and tech campus, in Manjeri, the same small town in Malappuram, Kerala where he grew up, instead of Bangalore, Kochi,...
A ZilCubator batch in Manjeri finishes its final pitch day, the mentors head home, and the founders pack up their laptops. On paper, the program is over. In practice, something else keeps running underneath it. Batchmates still call each other about a tricky hire, a...
Ask most people what Kerala’s startup policy has done for the state, and you will hear about Kochi’s IT corridor or the capital’s incubators. Almost nobody mentions a town like Manjeri. That gap is not an accident, and it is not permanent either. Key...
