Start-up Village in Andhra to boost IT innovation
29 Sep 2014
The AP government is signing a memorandum of understanding with the chairman of Start-up Village at Kochi, Sanjay Vijayakumar, today, The Times of India reported.
According to a release, the MoU with the state government signalled the arrival of the first incubator in Andhra Pradesh.
Vijayakumar said the incubator model which had created significant changes in the entrepreneurial climate of Kerala, specially among the youth, would work with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including universities, colleges and students along with industry and private partners, to build a world-class startup ecosystem in AP.
He added, the biggest advantage of Start-up Village was that it carried the experience of having attracted over 5,000 applications and incubated over 800 startups of which 256 were student startups.
He added the experience of creating an entrepreneurial culture was unparalleled in India and Visakhapatnam would be the second location to have a startup village after Kochi.
He pointed out that, there were opportunities for all states to create a homegrown Infosys or Google, and ecosystems like Startup Village would help in creating an environment to "build, break and innovate".
Startup Village helped build local innovation and startup ecosystems in a state, he said. He pointed out India needed many such facilities where young students could dream about building a new future.
Meanwhile, The New Indian Express reported that techies who had a product idea but did not have the tools to execute it, have just got their prayers answered, with the Start-up Village to be inaugurated at Technology Research and Innovation Park (TRIP) at Madhurawada Hill-3 where they would not only get all the equipment required to execute their idea but also funding for their business venture.
The project would be inaugurated by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu. The centre is designed as public-private-partnership initiative on the lines of the one in Kochi.
The facility would be spread over 17,000 sq ft of fully furnished and air-conditioned startup space at Rushikonda in Visakhapatnam.
The event would be attended by chief mentor Kris Gopalakrishnan, the co-founder of Infosys.
It will commence operations within two weeks and provide all the necessary plug-and-play equipment including computers and internet access, which would allow innovating entrepreneurs to start their companies overnight.
The stated goal of Startup Village aims to find a billion dollar campus startup from India within the next 10 years.
