Nasscom sets up registry for start-ups

National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), which represents the $118-billion Indian IT industry, Monday launched a registry to build a repository of technology start-ups in the web, mobile, e-commerce and marketplace and make it a virtual platform for investors, enterprises, media and government.

"India is emerging as the hotbed for technology start-ups and our '10,000 start-up progarmme' will partner with all stakeholders to help the country emerge as an innovation hub," Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar told reporters here on the occasion.

As a one-stop platform for all stakeholders, the registry will be a national database of start-ups and identify the areas of their operations, providing an opportunity to be engaged with investors, large enterprises, media and state-run organisations.

The association also announced the third phase of its start-up programme, which in the first two phases during the last 12 months attracted 7,000 applications.

Of the total applications, 529 were short-listed and 125 have benefitted through funding, acceleration, mentoring, co-working space, enterprise connects and showcase opportunities.

"We hope the third phase brings up more innovative start-ups with brilliant products and solutions that impact not only the business, but also citizens the world over," Chandrashekar said.

With the third phase, the association will take forward the learning from the first two phases and focus on evangelising and creating an ecosystem around domain and technology segments.

The programme will invite domain centric applications and plans to launch application-based contests from entrepreneurs.

"Global chip maker Intel will be an industry sponsor and collaborate with us to make India a hotspot in the Internet of Things, a virtual representation of an internet structure with unique identifiers and ability to transfer huge volumes of data over a network seamlessly," Chandrashekar observed.

The association's InnoTrek, a representative delegation of software products and solutions, will visit Israel, Singapore, Hong Kong and some European countries this year to showcase the country's most innovative start-ups building world class products.

"We will also focus on the Nasscom-Google 'girls in tech' programme to increase representation of women founders in start-ups," Nasscom product conclave chairman Ravi Gururaj said.

The association recently took a 25-member delegation representing various start-ups to the Silicon Valley in the US for entrepreneur focused events and provided a global platform for young businesses to showcase their work and get a first-hand experience of the ecosystem there.

"Though India is buzzing with entrepreneurial spirit, the country lacks skills, scale and speed required to excel in the fast-paced technology environment. Our 10,000 start-ups programme aims to draft courses and modules to impart skills like inbound marketing, application development, big data and analytics to create a pool of talent," Gururaj added.