Come October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, scores of entrepreneurs and investors hailing from Andhra Pradesh will take up a bus yatra from Visakhapatnam to Sri City in Nellore district to promote rural innovation.
A large number of entrepreneurs and investors from different countries will arrive in Amaravati on September 30 and interact with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on October 1.
“The Chief Minister will flag off the Ankur Yatra on October 2, which will have a convoy of 25 buses. It will stop by certain towns across the route before reaching Sri City. From there, they will proceed to IIT in Tirupati to organise a grand finale,” J A Chowdhary, Founder of the International Start-up Foundation (ISF), told businessline.
Distributed model
The yatra would comprise smaller events in places like Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Guntur where an entrepreneur or a university takes the lead in rallying around the participants and identifying innovative products and solutions.
“They all come to Amaravathi on September 30 and will meet the Chief Minister the following day,” he said.
“We bring together hundreds of top corporate executives, investors, startups, venture capitalists, angel investors, and corporate employees from around the world to promote rural innovation and startups in Andhra Pradesh,” he said.
“This initiative aims to bolster the economy, generate jobs, and foster distributed growth across the state. It will recognise and promote innovative ideas emerging from rural areas and facilitate the creation of job opportunities in rural areas,” he said.
He said that it was time developers looked at solving societal issues. “The real issues to be solved in rural areas. We have decided to make the startup founders think about the real problems of the country. When we floated the idea, we are overwhelmed by the response from the Telugu entrepreneurs and investors that made it big in India and abroad,” he said.
Chowdhary, who played a key role in grooming the IT industry in its early years, said a similar yatra will be conducted in Telangana after the completion of the yatra in Andhra Pradesh.
“The scope for replication of the idea in other States is immense,” he pointed.
He said the yatra would identify at least 10-15 start-ups on the last day and find ways to groom them.