VizChitra 2025: India's first community-driven Data Visualization conference

{The Indian Start-up ecosystem has grown to become one of the world’s largest. Start-ups today are becoming important engines of change, economy, and innovation. More importantly, start-ups have also been capturing the imagination of the youth today.

A major problem of the startup ecosystem is scattered data. While the availability of digital technologies have been helpful in obtaining information, most of the data are in silos and the dependencies are not fully understood. At IIT Madras, we have developed India’s comprehensive information platform on start-ups and innovations. Advances in data sciences and understanding of the start-up ecosystem have helped us to develop this platform.

Though not well known, start-up has been the most dominant area of policy making in Independent India, going by the number of ministries focused on start-ups. More than 20 Ministries of the national government, and almost all major state governments have a policy on start-ups and innovation. Visualization can be an effective tool for communicating with policy makers. The proposed session would explore possibilities of effectively visualiziing the start-up landscape that can commnicate policy priorities.}

{1. Approaches to communicate complexity through visualization for effective policy formulation, through the use of data on start-ups and innovation as an illustration. 2. Highlight how the visual narrative can complement other forms of narrative by highlighting “elements in the shadow”}

{Data visualization designers, management consultants, data and business analysts, policy makers, research scholars, and start-up enthusiasts}

{Thillai Rajan is a Professor in the Department of Management Studies and leads the Centre for Research on Start-ups and Risk Financing (CREST) at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. During 2009 – 18, he edited the annual India Venture Capital and Private Equity Report. In 2020, he played a key role in the formation of innovation, Venturing, and Entrepreneurship in India Network (iVEIN), a multi-institutional consortium to research on innovation and venturing in India. He is also a co-founder of YNOS Venture Engine, a start-up set up to address the pain points of early stage entrepreneurs. From 2017 – 2022, he was also an associate at the Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. Between Aug – Dec 2022, he hosted India’s First LIVE chat show on Start-ups, The Start-up Junction, in Doordarshan Tamil, part of the National Broadcasting Network. He has been the recipient of the Fulbright Nehru Senior Research Fellowship, the Endeavour Executive Fellowship of the Government of Australia, and the Chevening Gurukul Fellowship}