Thaindian News

Kochi, Jan 18 (IANS) The country’s first Public Private Partnership (PPP) telecom business incubator - ‘Startup Village’ - will be set up at KINFRA Park in Kalamassery near here.

Startup Village will focus primarily on student start-ups from college campuses and would be modelled on Technology Incubators in the Silicon Valley, US.

It aims to incubate 1,000 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), the government of India, Technopark and MobME Wireless have joined hands to set up Startup Village.

State-owned Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (KINFRA) aims at bringing together all the suitable resources available in the state and developing infrastructure to woo the industrial growth of the state.

The agreement on taking 15,000 sq ft space was signed between MobME CEO Sanjay Vijayakumar and KINFRA managing director S. Ramanath.

Ramanath said the Startup Village will provide a vibrant ecosystem for start-ups to create breakthrough 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 start-ups in the incubator before it is released in the commercial markets,” said Ramnath.

The first phase of the Startup Village is expected to be inaugurated by February this year and the first batch would be inducted by April.

Sijo Kuruvilla, CEO of Startup Village, said the campus will have full 4G network, advanced telecom labs and also provide all services that are required for a student to start a company even while in college.

MobME wireless is one of India’s fastest growing Mobile Value Added Service Companies. Founded in 2006 as a campus start-up, MobME is today rated by Nasscom as amongst the 50 emerging companies in the country.

Sanjay Vijayakumar, CEO of MobME, said they aim to market the Startup Village aggressively within the non-resident Keralite community and high-net worth individuals for their support to the start-up eco-system in Kerala.

“Infosys co-founder and co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan is the chief mentor of the Telecom Innovation Hub and his mentoring would be the biggest value we can provide to budding entrepreneurs who can interact with Kris, to learn and imbibe the art of building a billion dollar enterprise,” said Vijayakumar.