Centre to connect 300,000 CII members
The new CII Centre for Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Start-ups in Telangana will offer landing pad and enable connections of Indian start-ups with a global network, thus helping to complement and strengthen each other’s entrepreneurship ecosystems.
It will also encourage funding for the entire value chain from proof of concept to business models and explore new business models for farming, said S Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, CII National Start-up Council and Chairman, Axilor Ventures.
Elaborating, he underlined the Centre’s role to provide thought leadership, shared knowledge, policy suggestions, handholding to start-ups and student entrepreneurs.
Gopalakrishnan expects the Centre to spur research translation from lab to market, generate society-ready innovation and foster innovation for societal problems.
The Centre will further focus to connect 300,000 members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with the start-ups through mutually beneficial partnerships.
CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee stated that the Centre will have start-ups work together with the large business houses and corporates through CII network, in the lines of the very successful model of Silicon Valley.
The Centre will give a huge fillip to innovation-driven entrepreneurship, he assured, pointing out that the CII centre would focus on deep tech start-ups in the manufacturing sector as there is a need to create unicorns in the technology sector.
Banerjee further mentioned that the Center will buttress the entrepreneurial partnerships and create newer avenues for generating a great deal of wealth and sizeable employment simultaneously in the quickest possible time.
Ideate and Innovate in Telangana for the world – will be the mantra of CII Centre for Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Start-ups that will provide the right mix of entrepreneurial elements and shall go a long way in strengthening the start-up ecosystem, added KT Rama Rao, Minister Information Technology of Telangana State at the launch of the centre in Telangana on 11 July 2020.
In his keynote address at the Launch ceremony, Rao applauded that the centre is a pioneering initiative of CII and is a standing testimony of an enabling ecosystem of Telangana.
He further emphasized that the start-up-focused approach of the Telangana government can be estimated from its multiple sector-specific initiatives such as cleantech-focused ‘Sanitation Hub (S-Hub)’, ‘We-Hub’ for supporting women entrepreneurs, prototyping centre – ‘T-Works’, block-chain accelerator ‘T-Block’, the largest startup incubator, ‘T-Hub’, and the existence of progressive life sciences companies among others.
The minister further stated that the aforesaid CII Centre will provide the right mix of entrepreneurial elements – mentorship, access to capital, a safety net for experimentation, coupled with the conviction to follow up on a grand vision and will do wonders for strengthening the start-up ecosystem is not just Telangana but across India.
The Centre will be an innovation hub and ecosystem enabler, T-Hub will work with CII to create meaningful impact not just for corporations, but small and medium enterprises to get access to innovative startups to help them accelerate and elevate innovation to transform their businesses.
This will also help the startups from across the country in their growth trajectory, added Ravi Narayan, CEO of T-Hub and Chief Innovation Officer of the State of Telangana.
Industry leaders including Dr. BVR Mohan Reddy, Chairman, CII National Education Council, Member of the Board of Directors, T-HUB and Executive Chairman, Cyient, Dr. Ramesh Datla, Chairman, CII National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and Chairman ELICO Limited assured of the industry support to make the centre a truly successful Centre of Excellence going ahead.
The CII Centre for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Start-ups is supported by the Government of Telangana, by way of space at T-Hub technology startup incubator in the city, and Pratiksha, a charitable trust founded by Gopalakrishnan.
The Centre is set to provide a very robust platform for building a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.
The primary objective of the Centre would be to attract the most innovative start-ups to collaborate with the corporates and to help corporates identify suitable budding start-ups for forging business partnerships and work with start-ups at the co-working space.
The Centre will forge partnerships with 9,100 members of CII from the private as well as public sectors, including SMEs and MNCs, and an indirect membership of over 300,000 enterprises from 288 national and regional sectoral industry bodies.
The Centre would curate a customised programme for corporate houses and enable connection with the right start-ups based on industry’s needs and future strategies, said CII.
It would lay a special focus on deep tech start-ups in the manufacturing sector by creating a pool of potential start-ups from young researcher community and help them developing business plans and with investment.
The Centre would further help investors select potential start-ups for committing financial stake, build partnerships with the national and international academic centres of excellence for imparting knowledge to and assistance in capacity development of budding start-ups, and work with Government of India and State governments to forge partnerships with foreign governments to launch mutual soft-landing of start-ups.
The Centre will serve as a knowledge Centre for preparing and empowering potential entrepreneurs in India through various capacity building programs and convert job seekers to job creators.
The Centre will strengthen capabilities of entrepreneurs to improve their competitiveness in the local and international markets, assist entrepreneurs in the process of business opportunity identification, analysis and finalization, supporting market research, facilitate technology tie-ups thereby creating enabling ecosystem for the growth of start-up and employment generation. #startups #fintech #innovation #technologies #cii #digital /fiinews.com
