Re: Startup scene in Mauritius

From: Stephen Naicken <stephennaicken_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 23:16:04 +0400

Hello Mr. Moonesamy,

On 1 January 2016 at 12:15, S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com> wrote:
> Dear Dr Naiken,
>
> There is a confusion between SMEs and start-ups. It seems like any new
> company which sells something which is IT-related might be a startup.

I agree and to add further confusion, there seem to be many
definitions of the word [1].

I've briefly browsed through the Ebene Accelerator website, ICT.io and
other sources. To me, many of the companies that identify as startups
would struggle to meet any of the definitions given in [1]. Many seem
to be digital agencies rather than product/service providers.

Maybe it is our reluctance to fail that leads us to creating SMEs
where there is lower risk, rather than creating startups that try to
scale quickly and consequently the risk of failure is higher.

> There are financial incentives [1] being offered to
> foreign investors. My guess is that the investors are usually
> non-Mauritians.

Thank you for this. I was aware of two of the schemes listed and it
is good to see that there are a few more. It would be interesting to
have access to data on the uptake of these schemes.

> I took a quick look at SMEDA. The SME Guide [2] could have
> been written by people who are good at producing a tertiary "General Paper".

I had the "pleasure" of the reading that a few days ago.

Regards,

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-proper-definition-of-a-startup

-- 
Dr. Stephen Naicken, BSc (Sussex), MRes (Sussex), Ph.D (Sussex)
Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Informatics
University of Sussex
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/snaicken
Twitter: _at_stephennaicken
Received on Sun Jan 03 2016 - 19:17:00 PST

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