It's a fact that Kerala has high number of IoT / Hardware Startups. But what exactly does that mean?

So yet another IoT venture shuts shop. Businesses closing down due to business reasons is completely an acceptable outcome. Pebble did make an honest attempt and we should credit them for that. #RIPPebble

Now something that's not related to Pebble story. But yes, my thoughts got triggered by Pebble news.

It's often a matter of surprise to many that Kerala has a very high concentration of hardware / IoT startups. A place where manufacturing as a viable business model never took off is indeed a very unlikely location for IoT / hardware based businesses. So whenever I get a chance to interact with IoT / hardware startups from Kerala, I try to understand from them what exactly is the cause of this phenomenon.

I think now I know the answer - Not knowing the Knowns, like your potential customers, vendors and manufacturing partners. Where they are, how to find them and so on. And also it's not uncommon to see people chasing big ideas without caring to develop required skills to design, build and sell the product. All these ultimately translate to some sort of fake confidence supplemented by lack of clarity on capital requirement. 

Yes. A good majority of the IoT / hardware startup entrepreneurs from Kerala don't know the Knowns. And not knowing the knowns increase their confidence levels and they get into this space.

But that also ensures they are unable to come up with a plan to build the product version 1.0 and take it to market. I am not at all concerned about unknowns because facing the unknowns is what entrepreneurship is also about. Now, situation is similar for software startups, but there is a big difference in the impact.

The difference is, mistakes are damn expensive for IoT / hardware startups and every single mistake drains the capital much faster than a mistake in a typical software startup would end up with. Most of the hardware / IoT entrepreneurs don't realise this fact.

The end result -> Kerala still doesn't have an IoT / hardware startup that has gone beyond ideation / prototype stage and reached intended market.

I am not forgetting the likes of Sastra Robotics and Asimov Robotics which has real chances of going to the next level. Also we have stories like Terumo Penpol & V-Guard. But yes, they knew the Knowns and planned their capital and capacity accordingly.

Am I suggesting not to do IoT / hardware startup in Kerala? Not at all. All I want to say is IoT entrepreneurs have a reason to be much more careful about their every step than their software entrepreneur friends should be.