KOCHI:
Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman of Startup Village which is fostering a culture of entrepreneurship among college goers across the country through mentorship and industry support, has been appointed Advisor and Mentor by the Uttar Pradesh government for its newly unveiled IT and Startup Policy 2016.
Vijayakumar, who is also Advisor to Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan governments for their startup policies, has been tasked by the Uttar Pradesh government to “foster entrepreneurship and promote innovation by creati
ng an ecosystem that is conducive for the growth of startups in the state.”
He has also been invited to become a member of the state-level Advisory Panel, which is to be constituted for guiding ‘the entire startup ecosystem in the whole of Uttar Pradesh’.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who met Vijayakumar at Lucknow on Wednesday, expressed admiration for the Startup Village and its pioneering role in creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem for students in the country.
Startup Village has signed an MoU with the Uttar Pradesh government to launch its flagship programme #StartInCollege in the state. The programme, India’s largest attempt to build an entrepreneurial culture amongst its youth, offers top engineering teams from the country the chance to nurture their business idea, build a prototype and launch to early customers in six months; the last week to be spent at the Silicon Valley experiencing world-class startup ecosystem. They will also interact directly with developer teams at companies such
as Facebook and Paytm.
The state government provides a string of benefits to startups and incubators, such as fiscal and non-fiscal incentives like capital grant for IT infrastructure and financial support for operational expenditure to incubators. Also, funding support is provided at pilot and prototype stages to startups.
“India’s quest to build its own Facebook and Google has taken a significant step with the country’s most populous state having 200 million people deciding to invest in student startups. It has got some top-ranked engineering colleges and management institutes and students can delve into entrepreneurship with full state support,” Vijayakumar said.
“Involvement of the state chief ministers to spread message of entrepreneurship is very critical in bringing about the mindset change as startup is a new way of thinking,” he added.
Ajay Deep Singh, Managing Director, U.P. Electronics Corporation Limited, said Vijayakumar’s contribution as a Mentor would add immense value in strengthening the startup and entrepreneurship culture in the state through handholding, mentoring, supervising and mentoring the startups.
“The mentor would be associated with incubators in premier host institutions like IIT-Kanpur, IIM-Lucknow, IIT-BHU, Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology (KNIT) Sultanpur and IT UPVAN located across Uttar Pradesh,” he pointed out. “We believe that Uttar Pradesh can emerge as a hot startup destination by investing in the youth and student startups.”
Startup Village, India’s first PPP model technology business incubator, has recently launched its phase 2 digital iteration, SV.CO, which is the world’s first online incubator for student startups. Lunched in July, it has planned a phased rollout countrywide with the aim of reaching 50 lakh students in 3,500 engineering colleges.
