Innovation to get a boost under IIITS start-up ecosystem

Tirupati: In line with the Government of India's initiative to boost Indian start-up ecosystem, Gyan Circle Ventures (GCV) at IIIT Sri City has focused on motivating the youngsters to make use of the available schemes to nurture their start-up ideas. The idea was to pursue entrepreneurship and start-up by youth to become job givers rather than job seekers.

The Indian Institute of Information Technology Sri City (IIITS) was established by the Ministry of Human Resources Development as an Institute of National importance.

The GCV, a technology business incubator of IIITS is funded under TIDE 2.0 scheme of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and offers incubation support, including co-working space, mentorship, industry/market oriented network support, training etc.,

Innovators or entrepreneurs have access to the research labs and mentorship of faculty and research scholars of the institute. India has emerged as the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world next only to USA and China in which its reforms and policies towards start-ups played a crucial role. The Director of IIITS Prof G Kannabiran said that India has climbed from 81 in 2015 to 46 in 2021 in the Global Innovation Index as per World Intellectual Property Organisation.

On the sidelines of an information event in Tirupati, he spoke to The Hans India. The Director explained that the GCV at IITS has provided funding to 10 start-ups which are running successfully. It is the right time for the start-ups in the country and youth can catch the opportunities by nurturing their ideas in a proper way for which the GCV has been inviting applications for two schemes.

The 'Entrepreneurs-in-Residence' (EiR) is an early stage start-up which is ready to develop and validate their idea into a Proof-of-Concept (POC) with support for idea development, validation and subsequent development of POC along with a grant of up to Rs 4 lakh while the start-up grants are nascent start-ups with a definite POC to create a minimum viable product and to advance the start-up till Go-to-market stage. GCV will provide mentorship and guidance throughout the programme with a grant of up to Rs 7 lakh.

He added that there should be innovation and technology, which are the basic conditions for any start-up idea to be considered for funding. For the mentoring cum information event held at Sri Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam on Saturday, about 50 potential start-ups and 100 final year students from various colleges have attended.

They were given necessary inputs about the schemes and one-to-one mentoring sessions were also organised with a cross section of participants.

The ideas included use of advanced IT & Electronics in Agriculture, health, education, manufacturing, etc., For further details and application procedure, visit www.iiits.ac.in or call 7337327448.