Nasscom plans tieup with states for startup warehouses

The warehouses are expected to come up in the next 12-15 months

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) is planning to set up 12 to 15 startup warehouses across various states in the next 12-15 months to support its 10,000 start-ups programme, which envisages offering a platform for entrepreneurship development.

It has already set up the first such facility in Bangalore and plans to talk with other state governments for similar warehouses, said Krishnakumar Natarajan, chairman of Nasscom and MD & CEO of Mindtree Ltd. The Bangalore facility offers around fully ready 12,000 sft for start ups to commence operations, and has a capacity to house 8-10 companies.

“We are expecting to have 12-15 startup warehouses in next 12-15 months. These warehouses are a collaborative model and we need to talk with the state governments to start this. We are planning to speak with various state governments, including Kerala and Tamil Nadu,” he said. There could be more than one such warehouse in a state, considering the potential.

Speaking at the conference, he said, the technology industry was huge in terms of growth when compared with other industries and there were great opportunities in internet and mobility. Especially, in India where there are 600 million mobile users and close to one-third of them is smart phone users.

Social mobility and analytics are also expected to drive the growth, while creating software products is another big opportunity. There is enough headroom for growth in the technology sector.To capture this market, entrepreneurship idea should get instilled in students and one of the positive developments is that people are getting accustomed to accept failures. Kerala is one of the major states where there are more number of students coming out of engineering colleges and doing entrepreneurship, rather than simply pursuing jobs.

Thus, entrepreneurship and innovation should become the two building blocks of the nation, he added.

The technology industry in the country has been serving the western world. However, there are enough local problems, which can be solved either through technology or through engineering knowledge. Once the local problem in India is solved, the product can be taken to a global scale, he added.

For instance, in healthcare, India is a country which looks at quality healthcare at affordable prices. There are companies such as Forest Health, based in Bangalore, which started with an intention building device to find out people in rural area affected by cataract or glucomea. The company is shipping out its devices at one-tenth cost. The product has so far touched 200,000 people.

Lakshmi Narayanan, chairman of ICTACT and vice chairman, Cognizant, said the industry had seen a change in the recent past, and it appears that almost 50 per cent of the recruitments were off campus. “We believe that greater proportion of Tier II, III cities would become the hiring area of the industry, once the off-campus recruitment gets more prominence,” said Narayanan.

The Tamil Nadu government is looking at developing more startup companies through its agencies and is exploring opportunities to enhance the smooth working, said T K Ramachandran, secretary, state InformationTechnology.