Telecom Lead India: India’s first Public Private
Partnership telecom business incubator known as ‘Startup Village’ in KINFRA
Park at nearby Kalamassery, has been inaugurated by Infosys co founder Kris
Gopalakrishnan.
The focus of this village is to focus on student startups
from college campuses. It would be modeled on Technology Incubators in the
Silicon Valley. The village aims to incubate 1000 product start ups over 10
years and start the search for a billion dollar company from a college campus
by the turn of this decade.
The National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship
Development Board (NSTEDB), the Department of Science and Technology (DST),
Government of India, Technopark and MobME Wireless have joined hands
to set up the Startup Village – Indian Telecom Innovation Hub.
The Village will build a lively ecosystem for start-ups
to create advance technologies for the global telecommunications industry. This
would be made possible in association with leading companies in the Telecom
sector by setting up Telecom Innovation Zones that bring the latest technology
platforms and products to the startups in the incubator before it is released
in the commercial markets.
Chief mentor of the startup village, Kris Gopalakrishnan
described this inauguration as a “milestone” in Kerala, and said the
concept was to create an ecosystem “to increase the confidence and
probability of success.”
The campus will have full 4G network in the park, advanced Telecom
labs and also provide all services, including Legal, Intellectual Property,
Accounting, Full furnished Office Space, Video Conference Rooms, Computers,
Phone Lines, Internet, Server Space and virtual office services that are
required for a student to start a company even while in college.
Furthermore, the startup village will give a slew of perks from three year
service tax holiday to funding opportunities for Tech start-ups. The incubator
companies can by default make a pitch presentation to Startup Village Angel
Fund, promoted by the broadest community of entrepreneurs.
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.
editor@telecomlead.com
