India will witness its first telecom business incubator called Startup Village-Indian Telecom Innovation Hub, near Chennai. The innovation centre will be modeled on the concept of technology incubators in the Silicon Valley and will focus on student entrepreneurial ventures from college campuses. The initiative aims to create a platform for the budding entrepreneurs.
The project is based on public private partnership and will be completed through joint efforts from the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Department of Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, and MobME Wireless.
Infosys co-founder and co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan is chief mentor of the Telecom Innovation Hub.
The first phase of the project is expected to be inaugurated by February 2012 and the first batch would be inducted by April 2012. The campus will have full 4G network, advanced telecom labs and also provide all services including legal, intellectual property, accounting, full furnished office space, video conference rooms and virtual office services.
In addition to this, leading companies in the telecom sector will set up telecom innovation zones to bring the latest technology platforms and products to the startups for making their products commercially viable.
The project aims to incubate 1,000 product startups over the next 10 years. Further, it expects to find a billion dollar company from a college campus by end of 2022.
