NEW DELHI: The southern Indian state of Kerala has opened a new hub in the UAE aimed at helping expat entrepreneurs explore overseas markets and attracting more investment to the state. Situated on India’s Malabar Coast, Kerala is the home state of many Indian expatriates in the Gulf. Around 1 million Keralites currently live in the UAE. The Kerala Startup Mission — the state’s agency for the development of entrepreneurship — runs its Startup Infinity initiative to help Indian expats launch their own businesses and to assist Kerala-based companies looking to enter the global market. As part of that initiative, the agency opened its first overseas center in Dubai last week. “The Startup Infinity Center in Dubai will help Kerala-based startups explore the overseas market and make Kerala a key point of access for overseas startups to explore the Indian market,” KSUM’s head of business linkage Ashok Kurian Panjikaran told Arab News. “The UAE is a place where a large number of Keralites are and it’s an ideal place to support them in terms of starting and scaling business.”Entrepreneurs from Kerala and the Indian diaspora will be able to network and establish new ventures at the center, which will also help companies with registration, talent scouting, and launching their enterprises. “Kerala’s startup ecosystem is growing and there (are many) startups at the expansion stage and seeking global markets. They can use the Startup Infinity space as a foothold to expand their businesses overseas,” Panjikaran said. The Dubai center is one of the byproducts of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed by India and the UAE last year. “Since the CEPA came into effect, Dubai has become a major trade hub for India. There has been lots of value addition and collaboration between the two countries,” said Savio Mathew, head of the Kerala chapter of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. The CEPA has also contributed to startup growth, he added, and he expects that the Dubai center will further boost it. “For any business to develop there has to be some hand-holding from the concerned authorities,” Mathew said. “The Infinity Center is the ideal platform to promote startups and get more investment.” It is also expected to further increase India’s economic engagement with the UAE. “There is now a structured platform to kindle new ideas and to nourish existing ones,” Sunjay Sudhir, India’s ambassador to the UAE, told Arab News. “If India is among the top startup countries, the UAE is among the top countries which support startups. Many of the unicorns you see in India today have been supported, in some way or the other, by the UAE.”