As the country celebrates two years of Startup India mission, a new chapter in the start-up field is opening up in Ahmedabad creating co-working spaces for tech startups to incubate and get nurtured.
On Wednesday, the visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will dedicate to the nation newly built campus of International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology (iCREATE) near Sanand in Ahmedabad paving the way for next level of growth for IT start-ups.
Joining the bandwagon is the Ahmedabad-based end-to-end IT services provider, Dev Information Technology Ltd, which has announced setting up a massive Accelerator Center for start-ups, making it a one-stop solution for entrepreneurs to conceive, develop, test and commercially rollout their ideas.
The announcement comes at a time, when Gujarat is playing a crucial role in providing backhand support to the country's new generation Internet-of-Things (IoT) segment.
"India has already leap-frogged in the start-up space, while Gujarat is matching the footsteps. Currently, the challenges that we face is the angel investment, mentor-ship, quality of ideas and an accelerator space for tech startups," Jaimin Shah, Managing Director and CEO of Dev IT told BusinessLine .
"Considering these challenges we are building accelerator space for startups, where they will be given mentor-ship on how to materialise and make commercially viable their ideas, assistance on funding, market access and most important - a thriving working space with a matching environment to work from," added Shah. The project will require investment of Rs 50-70 crore.
To be named as DevX, the accelerator will have co-working space of about 15,000-18,000 square feet at single location with seating capacity for over 250 people. "This will be Gujarat's largest accelerator. It will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IOT), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Financial technology areas. The first phase will get ready by May 2018 with about 10,000 sqft area and full commissioning will happen by December 2018," added Shah.
An accelerator is typically a place developed with industry support to encourage new ideas to develop. Till now some of the prominent accelerators were developed in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune, where the startup community is thriving.
"This is a big push for Gujarat's IT field. And we have already started receiving bookings for the spaces. The advantage we have is the location in the middle of the city. We have observed that startups have limited resources and avoid traveling longer distances just to find working space," said Shah.
An individual start-up can hire upto 1-100 seats for a duration of one month to one year at DevX. The Common business center will also help them use the common utilities. The charges will start from Rs 7,500 per month per seat which includes mentorship, assistance on Intellectual Property rights as well as using the common infrastructure besides the working space.