The Andhra Pradesh Government has inked an MoU with Startup Village to create 1,000 startups over the next five years in the neighbouring state.
The MoU, signed yesterday by Startup Village Chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar and Sanjay Jaju, AP IT Secretary, makes Andhra Pradesh the second state in the country to have a startup village for creating a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem and a world class incubation facility at Visakhapatnam, a press release here said.
Startup Village will launch Rasberry Pie programme for school children and startup boot camps in engineering colleges towards creating a strong foundation to achieve the objective of creating 1,000 startups in Andhra Pradesh.
“It is a huge endorsement of Startup Village, India’s first telecom and Internet incubator which is making determined efforts to build a Silicon Coast in the country,” Vijayakumar who is also CEO of MobME Wireless, the country’s first campus startup, said.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who inaugurated the startup project on the PPP model, known as Technology Research and Innovation Park (TRIP), praised the Startup Village at Kochi.
TRIP is a world class facility spread over 17,000 sq ft at the IT layout, Madhurawada in Visakhapatnam.
‘Startup Village is a nation-building activity to create a startup ecosystem so that the youth in the nation can create new opportunities brought by the Internet revolution. It has changed the mindset of Keralites from being job-seekers to job-creators and this mindset change is unbelievable’ he said.
Startup Village CEO Pranav Suresh said the replication of Startup Village in Andhra Pradesh would give a fillip to its pioneering efforts to create entrepreneurs straight from college campuses.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder of Infosys and Chief Mentor of Startup Village who attended the event as Special Guest, recounted that Infosys was started in a rented flat when the founders were young as there was no risk.
Startup Village has the stated goal of finding a billion dollar campus startup from India within the next 10 years.