In a sudden turnaround of events following TVK’s victory in the recently concluded Tamil Nadu assembly elections, Sivarajah Ramanathan, StartupTN’s CEO & Mission Director, has called it a day. Interestingly, his service term was due to end only this December. Now, what does it mean for one of the fastest-growing innovation hubs in the country? Is it the end of the road for the wider Tamilnadu startup ecosystem? The news, for sure, came as a big blow to many startups, mostly beneficiaries of the various startup schemes introduced by Startup TN since its inception.
Hailing from Madurai, Sivarajah is widely considered one of the best ecosystem enablers in the country, even before becoming the founding CEO & Mission Director of TANSIM. As the founder of Nativelead, he passionately built a vibrant platform to enable, fund, mentor, and incubate small-town startups. The DMK government, when it came to power in 2021, wasted no time in appointing him as the chief of the newly formed nodal organization a year later for empowering startups. A move that was welcomed as a major step toward overhauling and building the state’s startup ecosystem. Though ambitious, hungry, and innovation-driven, Sivarajah had a tough task ahead. The world was gradually waking up from the effects of one of the worst pandemics ever. The state’s economy wasn’t doing any better when the DMK government took over, and was growing at a snail’s pace. The then Chief Minister, MK Stalin, articulated a robust vision for the state to achieve a $1 Trillion economy by 2030. Sivarajah had his task cut out and decided to take the challenge head-on.
Like a man possessed, Sivarajah set about building a high-performing team to accomplish the task laid before him. His experience of identifying and building startups from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities at Nativelead helped him tremendously. Small-town startups found a ray of hope in him, which only got bigger when the number of startups recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) increased from just over 2,000 in 2021 to more than 14,700 in 2026, a stellar feat that proved his naysayers wrong. Not to mention women-led startups in the state, which increased exponentially through various active mentoring, networking, and funding programmes launched by StartupTN.
Sivarajah upped the ante when he rolled out scheme after scheme in the areas of mentoring, funding, incubation, acceleration, and networking, especially for early-stage startups, and those are paying dividends now. Take, for instance, the highly popular TANSEED (Tamil Nadu Startup Seed Grant Fund), which provided equity-linked grants to early-stage startups in the idea, prototype, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), or New Product Development (NPD) stages. He was consciously, yet quietly, building one of the most robust and active startup ecosystems in the country through innovation and community-building. That, for me, is his crowning achievement.
Startup Thiruvizha, held in Coimbatore and later in Madurai in 2024, proved that Sivarajah and his team can stand and deliver. The event helped startups from all across TN showcase their ideas, network with industry leaders, and gain valuable insights. But the game was far from over. He decided to take Startup Thiruvizha global in 2025. As a result, the Tamil Nadu Global Startup Summit (TNGSS) event, held again in Coimbatore, attracted over 30,000 attendees, 750+ exhibitors, and 100+ investors from all over the world, and hosted several smaller specialized events and regional follow-up meetups post-event.
During his tenure, colleges and universities, the hotbed of budding entrepreneurs, were given special focus in terms of building pre-incubation centres and active Entrepreneurship Development Cells (EDC) through tailored programmes. The end of Sivarajah’s era, therefore, clearly signifies the end of the road for StartupTN. His working style was marked by inclusiveness, boldness, autonomy, and the rare ability for a bureaucrat to dream big. For one, love him or hate him, you simply can’t avoid his presence in the startup scene. But for now, take a bow, Sir!