MobMe to focus on technical side, create 1,000 student startups
In a significant development, Innovation Society, an autonomous body formed by the Andhra Pradesh Government to spread culture of innovation, will take the physical possession of Sunrise Startup Village here, the first one started in Visakhapatnam about one-and-a-half years ago.
Enquiries by The Hindu revealed that MobMe Wireless Solutions of Kochi Startup Village, which was entrusted with the job of incubating startups at Visakhapatnam on the model of technology incubators of the Silicon Valley following an MoU at the CEOs’ Conclave here on September 29, 2014, has agreed to reorient its strategies.
Sources said Innovation Society CEO Nikhil Agarwal, who is based at Tirupati, will visit the city shortly. The village housed in Technology, Research and Incubator Park (TRIP) built by the APIIC at sea-facing Rushikonda virtually took a leap in January 2015 with the organising of bootcamps for students.
Kochi Startup Village Chairman and MobMe Wireless Solutions co-founder, Sanjay Vijayakumar, denied they were exiting the Sunrise Startup Village. He told The Hindu , in an email interview, that the MoU signed with the AP Government was valid for five years to help build 1,000 student startups.
“What we are doing is changing our role from managing the physical infrastructure to going deeper into the school and college education system to build a culture of entrepreneurship. After a year of operations, we realised that the technical and entrepreneurial depth of teams is weak and needs to be strengthened from the college side to create strong founders,” he said.
Tie-up with JNTU
Mr. Vijayakumar said that to achieve it they had been working with JNTU-Anantapur and Kakinada to roll out “minors in entrepreneurship” programme for college students.
“This is exactly the same what we are doing in Kerala and Gujarat with the State technical universities here,” he claimed.
He disclosed that the Department of Science and Technology Government of India last week approved their plans to align with Startup India Action Plan and build Startup Village into a digital incubator platform (www.sv.co) for scaling up.
Physical infrastructure has limitations as students cannot come every day from all parts of Andhra Pradesh. Currently, 28 teams are in the pilot programme, including six student teams from the State. “Instead of exiting, we are going to scale this up now to 100 teams this academic year together with the two universities in AP,” he pointed out. When MobMe entered AP, the AP Innovation Society was not formed as well but now a CEO had taken charge and things had stabilised.
This allows for the Society to manage the physical infrastructure which is similar to how the physical infrastructure is managed by the Kerala Startup Mission in Kochi, Mr. Vijayakumar averred.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Visakhapatnam / by Santosh Patnaik / Visakhapatnam – June 07th, 2016