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...
Some founders pick a city the way they pick a co-founder. They ask around, they watch how people talk about it, and they make the call before they ever show up in person. A small but growing group of founders did exactly that with Manjeri. No site visit. No...
A landlord in Manjeri used to rent out a spare room only to a relative or a family friend. Now the same room gets asked about by someone who just got a job across town at a coworking campus. That small shift is happening across parts of Manjeri right now, and almost...
