The Union Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) will set up 10 incubation centres in Tamil Nadu in the next five years to develop entrepreneurship and encourage self-employment in the State.
These centres will promote and support untapped creativity of individual innovators and assist them to become technology-based entrepreneurs, according to Kalraj Mishra, Union Minister for MSME.
For instance, the centre will buy expensive design software and rent it to MSMEs for a nominal fee, he told newspersons after inaugurating SOUMEX 2014, a three-day sourcing and manufacturing exhibition organised by National Small Industries Corporation and Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association.
The first incubation centre will be set up in Chennai while the rest will come up after consulting the State government, which will provide the campus to house these centres.
The objective is to promote emerging technological and knowledge-based innovative ventures that seek the nurturing of ideas from professionals beyond the traditional activities of MSMEs. Such entrepreneurial ideas have to be fostered and developed in a supportive environment before they become attractive for venture capital.
The centres will also promote networking and forging of linkages with other constituents of the innovation chain for commercialisation of their developments, he said.