Kerala to sponsor 10 student entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley

The Kerala government will sponsor the visit of at least 10 student entrepreneurs to the Silicon Valley this year, as part of the SV Square programme of Startup Village.

By August, the state will set up a permanent centre in the US to facilitate these visits, said Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy.

The Startup Village to Silicon Valley (SV Square) programme, which was launched to give young innovators a first-hand experience of the world's best entrepreneurial ecosystem, has been among the most successful initiatives in two years of the Startup Village.

"When the five students briefed the Cabinet after their return from the Silicon Valley last year, we saw the transformational power of this initiative," Chandy said while speaking at the second anniversary celebrations of Startup Village here.

"The students who went were not the same when they returned; their newly found confidence and energy was astounding," Chandy said.

The level of support of entrepreneurship in Kerala is unparalleled in India, said Chandy pointing out that all state departments have been instructed to set aside one per cent of their budget, collectively amounting to Rs 500 crore, solely to support entrepreneurial ventures.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys executive vice chairman and Startup Village's chief mentor; PH Kurian, principal secretary of industries and IT, and Aruna Sundararajan, managing director of Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC), also attended the event marking two-years of Startup Village, where the best performing companies at Startup Village were honoured.

The Kerala IT policy envisages creating 3,000 startups by 2020.

"Startup Village, which is supporting 600 firms, has helped to achieve 20 per cent of that goal. We are on course to meet our target maybe by 2018 and some of these companies will hopefully be by then the 'billion-dollar' firms we dreamt of," said PH Kurian.

He said the state government is planning to organise a meet of Kerala-based angel investors in the next couple of months to connect them to startups looking to raise capital. A total of 15 acres of land has been allocated to create a 'mini Silicon Valley' in Kochi, an area that will be known in the future as the Silicon Coast, Kurian added.