India: Kochi Startup Village Launches World’s
First Digital Incubator for Students
A recent statement by the Kochi Startup Village stated that,
the country needs more than one million new jobs a month for the next 20 years
to employ all its youth and these jobs would mostly come from new start-ups if
the right environment is created.
Indian Government has also recognized the importance of
Start-ups for the development of the country. Government has taken many steps
like, Start-up action plan, Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for
incubators, etc., to create a proper environment for Start-ups. Recently, one
such step is taken by India’s First Digital State, Kerala.
World’s first digital incubator for student Start-ups will
be launched in Kerala on July 13, 2016. This incubator will provide mentorship
and guidance to young entrepreneurs from all over the country.
SV.CO. the digital avatar of Startup Village, will be
launched by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Infosys co-founder and Startup
Village chief mentor Kris Gopalakrishnan and National Science and Technology
Entrepreneurship Development Board head H K Mittal.
Students can apply individually or they can form a team and
then pitch their product or idea to the mentors. Once selected, students would
be guided and mentored to help create a prototype within 6 months, and launch
in the market quickly.
Application would be approved based on several pointers,
mainly being its market feasibility and the innovation in solving a particular problem.
Based on the feedback from customers and mentors, these
students can gradually climb up the ladder, and get access to incubators,
accelerators, and even raise angel funding. Besides, the teams can be hired
collectively by large firms, and they can be even sponsored for higher studies.
Gopalakrishnan said that students, especially from tier 2
and tier 3 cities, are deprived of access to the best faculty and mentors from
startup nerve centers like Bengaluru or Silicon Valley and this venture
"would address the problem to a large extent".[1]
The Digital Incubator, which was built over the last 12
months, has already received more than 1,000 applications from students from
across Kerala as well as towns like Vadodara and Vishakhapatnam.
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