Comments
Kerala is the first State to come up with a dedicated Techno Park to promote the IT industry. But it lost its plot to Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad as they went on to become poster boys for the IT services industry.
After two decades, the God’s Own Country has decided to re-discover the IT plot via products. With the StartUp Village concept catching the imagination of the college graduates, the State is now readying one lakh sq ft of space for the phase-II.
Since its start in April 2012, Startup Village has received 550 applications from young aspirants seeking incubation. About 200 of them are being supported through virtual incubation and 35 under its direct handholding.
The public-private initiative, backed by the Department of Science and Technology and the State Government, is now set for expansion, keeping in view the demand from engineering students. “We are seeking to incubate 1,000 start-ups in the next 10 years,” Sanjay Vijayakumar, who started a college start-up himself seven years ago, told Business Line.
Sanjay, who played a major role in promoting the Startup Village concept, felt that there was no point in building yet another services company. There, he argued, is no scope for such firm. “You see all the big services firms are born 2-3 decades ago. What India needs now is products companies that can give us tremendous value,” he pointed out.
Angel Network
In order to encourage the fledgling entrepreneurs, he said 100 top Malayalee businessmen and entrepreneurs are in the process of setting up an Angel Network with a size of $10-20 million. “We have submitted the proposal to the regulator. We are going to provide very early stage funding to the young entrepreneurs,” he said.
“We are seeking small amounts from the top entrepreneurs, say $1,000 each. Losing or gaining such sums would not make much difference to them. Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys has agreed to contribute 5 per cent to the angel network,” he said. Sanjay himself runs a products company called MobME, a telecom value-added services company that is going public in the next few weeks.
>kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.