National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Technopark Thiruvnanthapuram and MobME Wireless have joined hands to set up the country’s first telecom business incubator called Indian Telecom Innovation Hub. This is one of the first technology business incubator in public-private partnership (PPP) in the country.
The Telecom Innovation Hub is expected to create 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 startups in the incubator before it is released commercially.
With the launch of Telecom Innovation Hub, Kerala minister for industries and IT P K Kunhalikutty said, the aspiring young entrepreneurs of the state would get an opportunity to work closely with big companies and create path-breaking technologies.
H K Mittal, head and advisor, NSTEDB, said MobME Wireless and Technopark had created one of India’s finest start-up eco-systems that inspired 122 start-ups at the Technopark Incubator over the last five years. NSTEDB is pleased to support this innovative PPP model that aims to take that growth to the next level, he added.
The Indian Telecom Innovation Hub will focus primarily on student startups from college campuses and would be modelled on technology incubators in the Silicon Valley. 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 turn of this decade.
The team involved in this initiative has already begun work on establishing the hub as a platform to setup telecom innovation zones by leading companies of international repute.
Sanjay, CEO, MobME Wireless, said, “We will be launching the Telecom Innovation Hub by January next year and are marketing it aggressively within the NRK community and the high networth individuals for their support.” Infosys co-founder and co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan has agreed to be the chief mentor of the hub, he added. They were on the look-out for space in Kochi to set up the hub, and that the chosen campus would a have full 4G network in the Advanced Telecom Labs and provide all services including legal, intellectual property, accounting, fully furnished office space, video conference rooms, computers, phone lines, internet, server space and virtual office services.
