The State IT Department and the Government of Finland will look to forge partnerships and collaborations to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
This was the understanding that emerged out of discussions held between Mr K. C. C. Nair, who represented Technopark-Thiruvananthapuram, and Mr Aladiyan Manickam, Indian Ambassador to Finland, during the former's visit to that country recently.
Mr Nair is Chief Financial Officer of Technopark and Secretary and Registrar, Technopark-Technology Business Incubator (T-TBI).
Mr Nair was in Finland to represent Kerala in the 4th Global Forum on Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship organised by the Government of Finland and InfoDev (World Bank) held from May 28 to June 3 at Helsinki.
Among those who were present during the bilateral discussions were Dr Paavo Vayrynen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, Finland; Mr Shankar Meembat, Director, Developer Marketing, Nokia Corporation; and Mr Janmitra Devan, Vice-President, Financial and Private Sector Development (FPD), The World Bank Group.
The discussions were directed at identifying opportunities for Finnish companies to set up business in Kerala through a partnership programme. This programme provides advisory services and financial support for Finnish companies keen to invest in developing countries. The match-making services provide assistance for companies in developing countries looking for Finnish business partners.
Mr Nair has extended invitation to the Finnish Government, Nokia Corporation and the Indian Embassy at Helsinki to visit Kerala for further talks on finalising ways and means for building partnership in IT and telecom business. He had fruitful discussions with global incubation managers on how to raise the level of incubation initiatives at Technopark to global standards.
Along with officials of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, he visited Sweden and Estonia for studying the various incubation models.
A match-making session was organised for the infoDev TOP 50 SMEs (small and medium enterprises) which included Artin Dynamics from Technopark TBI.