The first phase of the country’s biggest technology incubator is expected to be ready by September.
The Indian School of Business (ISB) and the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Hyderabad) will join the project, which is being taken up by the Telangana Government. The facility is expected to house about 120 start-ups.
Telangana Information Technology Minister K Taraka Rama Rao had discussed this and other initiatives with a crowd of about 500 start-ups and representatives of a few big IT companies in the State capital on Friday evening.
With a view to funding the start-ups, the State Government would set up a corpus fund with the help of private equity firms and angel investors. It planned to give 1:1 funding (a matching amount to the investments made).
On the slowdown in growth of IT growth in Andhra Pradesh, he blamed it on the lack of decisive leadership at the State and at the Centre in the last five years. “There has been growth but it was not proportionate to the potential. Now that we have stable governments at the Centre and at the State, we can expect a good growth,” he said.
The Government would set up TASK (Telangana Academy of Skills) to train young engineers and make them employable. “Cyient (formerly Infotech Enterprises) has agreed to train 1,000 students,” he said.
Hy-fi
The new government is working on a project to make Hyderabad the first wi-fi enabled city in the country. “We may name it Hy-fi,” Rama Rao said.
“Broadband facility would empower people to draw the attention of the government,” he said.
Power woes
On the power shortage, he apologised to the entrepreneurs for power outages. “It is a legacy we carry. It’s due to the lack of foresight of our predecessor governments. We have decided to take measures to become self-sufficient in the next three years. We are buying power from Karnataka to tide over the crisis,” he said.
The Government would lay a transmission line to the neighbouring Chhattisgarh to augment power supply.