With a large pool of talent, Chandigarh and Mohali are becoming a delight for tech entrepreneurs

For Samar Singla, Chinmay Agarwal and Isha Singla, the cofounders of Chandigarh-based autorickshaw aggregator Jugnoo, starting up in the “City Beautiful” happened by default. Born and brought up in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, Agarwal wanted to stay away from his parents after completing his BTech in electrical engineering from IIT-Delhi. Chandigarh looked like a nice option when he cofounded ClickLabs, a mobile app development startup, in February 2011. For Isha, who completed her BTech in chemical engineering from IIT-Delhi, the move to Chandigarh too was guided by personal reasons: her parents lived in the city. She worked in Click-Labs as vice-president.
The third cofounder, Samar, was already based out of Chandigarh as cofounder of ClickLabs. And he wanted to stay closer to his hometown Sangrur, some 120 km from Chandigarh.

“Chandigarh happened by default. But we are staying in the city by design,” says 26-year-old Isha who has had stints with McKinsey and InMobi before cofounding Jugnoo in November 2014. Since then Jugnoo has raised $16 million, has over 3.5 million registered users, handles about 40,000 rides each day, is operational in 35 cities, has roped in over 12,000 auto drivers, and boasts of Paytm and Snow Leopard among its top investors, claims Isha.

Ask Isha if she would like to relocate Jugnoo to Bengaluru or Gurgaon — arguably India’s hottest startup hubs —and she rules out the possibility. “The question doesn’t arise,” she says, adding that the founding team did give a thought about exploring other cities to start Jugnoo. But it didn’t take them long to reject the idea unanimously.

So what’s so special about Chandigarh as a startup destination? Laidback city, no traffic snarls, greenery all around, a large pool of technology talent and a low attrition rate, says Isha, adding that Jugnoo has a headcount of 300 and the startup has faced few problems retaining employees. Chandigarh has also helped as a natural filter in getting the right kind of talent for Jugnoo, asserts Isha; if people are relocating to place like Chandigarh, then it shows commitment on their part.

“Operational costs have been lower,” says Agarwal. Equally importantly, attracting the right kind of talent has never been a problem. Reason: Chandigarh and its adjoining areas have a rich source of educational institutes such as the Punjab Technical University, National Institute of Technology in Jalandhar, IIT-Ropar and Panjab University.

Chandigarh Charm
Picturesquely located on the foothills of the Shivaliks, India’s first planned city has been slowly emerging as the first option for a bunch of entrepreneurs looking beyond the “over-cluttered and overrated” — as Agarwal puts it — cities of Gurgaon, Mumbai or Delhi. Take, for instance, JumboBasket. Cofounded by Vikram Nijhawan, Bhuwan Vadhera and Ashish Bali in August 2015, the online and offline inventory liquidation platform bagged angel investment in January this year. Located in Sector 35 C, JumboBasket operates out of a rented accommodation of roughly 400 sq ft.

Apple and Samsung too adorn the market with their huge showrooms. The monthly rent forked out: Rs 20,000. “It’s peanuts. A similar-sized place in Delhi or Gurgaon would have cost us a bomb,” says Bali.

Funding, perceived to be the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs in smaller cities, is now more easy to access virtually across the country. Ask Manipal Dhariwal, who has been fostering startups in Punjab. One of the founding members of the Chandigarh Angel Network, which was set up last October, Dhariwal runs a startup coworking space called Startup in a Box in Mohali. “Soon billion-dollar companies would be a reality from Punjab,” he declares.

Busting the myth that startups from smaller centres can’t grow big is fintech product venture uTrade. Cofounded by Kunal Nandwani in July 2011, uTrade offers trading, algo and risk platforms in 10 countries, raised seed funding of $1 million in 2012, posted revenues of $2 million in 2015-16, claims to have turned profitable, has a headcount of 65 employees and, for good measure, an office in London.

“The world is flat. What I can do from Chandigarh is what I can do from any place in India,” says Nandwani, who had worked in algorithmic trading at Lehman Brothers and Nomura in London.

The 35-yearold entrepreneur, who came back to India in 2011, has invested in three startups — one of them in Chandigarh — and is mentoring seven others in Punjab. “How many startups can a Mumbai or Bengaluru take?” he asks, adding that the minuses in the top cities outweigh the pluses. And the biggest minus is distraction, he contends. “You can stay focused in smaller towns.”

Small Centres, Big Investments
It’s not only Chandigarh that has been wooing entrepreneurs. Neighbouring town of Mohali and the city of Jalandhar (roughly 150 km from the capital) too have been witnessing spurts of new-age entrepreneurship. Mohali-based Vineet Saini is one such startup entrepreneur. Along with cofounders Sarvjeet Singh and Jaspreet Singh, Saini started product discovery and price comparison website Comparometer in September 2015. Within two months, it got an angel investment from Singapore-based Jaarvis Accelerators, and is now in talks to raise another round of funding.



“We are launching an Android app in November,” says Saini, who claims that her portal has over 2 lakh user sessions per month and around 5 lakh page views. The startup works on a commission model and has recently added offline retailers as well. “The biggest advantage of Mohali is low employee costs.” Saini also feels that lack of competition is another plus of starting up in a smaller place.

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Harshvardhan Tiwari in Jalandhar knows how to make the most of the lack of competition. The 20-year-old started ZORoute, an intercity taxi aggregator that has over 6,000 taxis in its network, in October last year. Though the venture is bootstrapped, Tiwari claims that it is profitable and investors are exploring options of pumping in money. “Jalandar is the NRI hub of Punjab. Starting up here makes sense,” he says.

While starting up in smaller cities may have its merits, there is a flip side. “It’s similar to the difference between a pond and a sea,” acknowledges Nijhawan of JumboBasket. The business opportunities in smaller towns are fewer. He is, however, quick to add that the disadvantage is not crippling. What a city like Jalandhar needs is a shot in the arm to speed things up. “Maybe a Flipkart from any such place would quicken the pace.”