Homegrown start-ups are moving out of Bengal in search of talent and a mature ecosystem to boost their business.

"There is a lack of talent here that is required to sustain any business, especially on the technology side, and that was the primary reason we had to shift to Bangalore," said Kaushal Dugar, founder and CEO of the tea-based e-commerce company Teabox that has its origins in Siliguri.

"Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India and the big tech companies are based out of that city, which assures easier access to them for start-ups like us. However, we have a team in Siliguri still and hope to be back when the ecosystem matures here," said Dugar on the sidelines of Startup East 2016, the annual event of the Calcutta Angels Network.

Teabox had started its operations from Siliguri and retains its registered office there. But the research and development centre of the start-up is now in Bangalore.

Abhishek Chatterjee, founder and CEO of Tookitaki, a start-up focusing on risk and compliance management for insurance and banking sector, said a nascent company would need more talent, mentoring and funding than the state can currently provide.

"Two to three years ago, Calcutta did not have the ecosystem for a start-up to thrive, which is why we had to move to Bangalore. This is because start-ups need proper mentors, guidance and a strong team, besides funds. Qualified people tend to move away from this city," Abhishek said. "However, things are improving now and there is a buzz around the ecosystem in the east."

Bengal is home to some of the older engineering colleges in the country. But the buzz in industry is that the quality of engineers they produce now don't quite match up to the best.

Private institutes have mushroomed in the state, churning out engineering graduates who apparently don't meet the quality expectations of start-ups looking for talent to hire.

"When a start-up grows and starts adding over a dozen employees, it is not possible to find the right technology support in Calcutta. So, migrating to cities such as Bangalore and Gurgaon becomes a necessity. Moreover, if a start-up wants to participate in the global competition, it has to have a base in these cities," said T.C. Meenakshisundaram, who is the founder and managing director of IDG Ventures India Advisors.

In 1991, when India opened the floodgates of economic liberalisation, Karnataka and Maharashtra, among others, came out with flexible business policies that ensured ease of doing business and attracted global investors. Bengal offered no such facilities and hence missed the bus, say veterans in the IT industry.

Naganand Doraswamy, president of The Indus Entrepreneurs Bangalore, said: "The model of innovation should be to focus on the talent available locally. In the start-up space, Bangalore stressed on product innovation while Pune nurtured automobile start-ups. Biotechnology start-ups thrived in Hyderabad. Similarly, Calcutta needs to create its own niche."

According to Doraswamy, any investor today looks at five key cities to invest in - Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi NCR and Chennai.

Venture capitalists in Calcutta have a different view, though. "It is true that Calcutta got into the start-up mood much later, but it is growing. We have seen an unprecedented rise in the start-up ecosystem in the eastern region over the past three years since our inception. In fact, the first 10 investments we made had only one start-up from Calcutta. But this year itself, we have already invested in two city-based start-ups, ZeroInfy and Vehico, and more are in the pipeline," said Siddharth Pansari, president of the Calcutta Angels Network.

Actor-entrepreneur Kunal Kapoor, founder of the country's first crowdfunding platform Ketto, has been following the green shoots. "I have been visiting Calcutta for some years now and this time the number of young entrepreneurs I see here are way higher than what it was about three years ago. That is a positive sign for the eastern region," he said.

Bengal has been the breeding ground of 500-odd start-ups, of which at least 100 have migrated to other cities, according to software industry forum Nasscom.