CHIEF MINISTER PINARAYI VIJAYAN LAUNCHES STARTUP VILLAGE PHASE 2 AND INITIATES #STARTINCOLLEGE NATIONAL
Text : Sangheeta Bhattacharya Photos : FWD Media
Chief MinisterShri PinarayiVijayan unveiled the world’s first digital student incubator SV.CO, the digital makeover of Startup Village, designed to help thousands of college-goers make an early start in entrepreneurship. SV.CO constitutes the second phase of Startup Village, during its first phase 2012-15, it supported more than 500 startups and helped create 3,000 jobs. With SV.CO, Startup Village will scale up its activities massively by reaching out five million students in 3,500 engineering colleges across the country by providing them a completely digital incubation framework, ranging from applicationfor admission to teaching, mentoring and graduation. It’s a brilliant opportunity to the students in far-flung cities and towns who may not have access to physical infrastructure or the mentoring in the early stages of entrepreneurship. “The Kerala government’s allocation for startups at Rs 300 crore is the highest till date which is higher than that of the Central Government’s Department of Science and Technology,” said the Chief Minister announcing a five-step strategy for students, including world class infrastructure on par with Silicon Valley, world class communication infrastructure, world class talent pipeline, world class funding infrastructure and world class incubators in PPP model like Startup Village.
SV.CO is venturing into unchartered territory and creating a new model of how to go beyond physical space to reach out to potential entrepreneurs across the country and offer them mentorship, network and infrastructure,” said Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys Co-Founder and Chief Mentor of Startup Village. In tune with the Prime Minister’s Startup India initiative and with a go ahead from the Central Government’s Department of Science and Technology, SV.CO provides #StartInCollege programme, offering a month of free training to students in entrepreneurship on its online platform. Students can form teams and apply at www.sv.co. Once selected, they will be guided right from picking an idea to building a prototype and its launch to early customers within six months. Based on whether customers like the product, teams can then graduate to incubators, accelerators, raise angel funding, and even get acqui-hired as a team or hired to other startups or go for higher studies.