Telecom Lead India: Startup Village, the first
public-private partnership incubator in India, will begin operations from
Kerala in April. The incubator will have a projected investment of Rs 100
crore. The Startup Village campus will have 4G network and advanced telecom labs.
The incubator will nurture more than 1,000 student
start-ups.
Oommen Chandy, Chief Minister of Kerala, announced the
launch of the dream project at a press conference in Delhi.
Former president of NASSCOM Kiran Karnik, HK Mittal from the
Department of Science and Technology (DST), Rajan Mathews, director general of
Cellular Operators Association of India, Abhishek Goyal, CEO of UrbanTouch.com,
and Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman of the Board of Governors of Startup Village
were also present.
The project is being set up by the National Science and
Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) under the DST, and the
Kerala Government-run Technopark, in collaboration with MobME Wireless.
Six years back, in 2006, Technopark took its first steps
into incubation when MobME Wireless, a young company promoted by then
engineering students, was launched. Today there are 125 companies in Technopark
Incubator employing 3000 people and generating Rs 100 crore annual revenues,”
said Ooomen Chandy.
Our aim is to incubate 1000 startups over the next 10 years
from college campuses and start the search for a billion dollar startup from
Kerala. Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys, would be the chief mentor
for startups and guiding them with his vision and expertise to make this a
reality,” Chandy added.
Former NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik; UrbanTouch.com CEO
Abhishek Goyal; former Yahoo India R& D CEO Sharad Sharma; Dell India MD
Ganesh Lakshminarayan; KK Natarajan of Mindtree; Arun Kumar, Global Board
Member of KPMG; Ravi Pillai, the biggest employer of Indians in the Middle
East; and major local IT entrepreneurs like Nandakumar of SunTec are among
those joining the project as mentors and investors.
Startup Village is a key experiment in the way forward for
creating a blueprint for scaling innovation with more active participation of
the private sector and to augment government efforts,” HK. Mittal said.
The next big wave in telecom sector is in the growth of
smart phones and 4G and Startup Village will help young startups to harness
these global opportunities. Game-changing innovations in the sector have
gathered pace, calling for a vibrant collaborative ecosystem. The industry will
support Government of India and the State Governments in this ambitious
exercise,” said Rajan Mathews.
The incubation center will be attempting to create a
complete ecosystem, starting from policy changes to allow students to pursue
entrepreneurship. This will be followed by an incubator, accelerator and angel
fund, all under one umbrella for the first time in the country.
It will also provide services, including legal, intellectual
property and accounting, in addition to fully furnished office space, video
conference rooms and virtual office services.
The hub will extend a host of perks, like three-year service
tax exemption up to Rs 50 lakh revenues. The incubator companies can by default
make a pitch presentation to Startup Village Angel Fund, promoted by the
broadest community of entrepreneurs.
