World's biggest Tech incubating facility in city

HYDERABAD: Telangana could soon boast of a homegrown Facebook, Twitter, Google or Whatsapp-like companies if the plans of the government are anything to go by.

Giving a call to Mark Zuckerbergs and Larry Pages of Hyderabad, KT Rama Rao, minister for IT & communications, has said the government is in the process of setting up the world's largest incubating tech facility plus an incubation fund to promote and nurture young talent and workable ideas.

Addressing the gathering at his first ITC industry round table, Rao said, a consortium comprising the International School of Business, IIIT-Hyderabad and the government were working out the modalities to launch the first phase of the proposed facility in the next six months.

'While we (Hyderabad) do $8 billion software exports, Bangalore does nearly thrice at $21 billion. What we lack is the technology ecosystem and skilled graduates,' he said.

Though the city boasts of 200 plus professional and engineering colleges, the graduates they churn out are not readily employable for lack of skills.

'To address the problem, we have come up with a concept, TASK, Telangana Academy of Skills & Knowledge that will bring together industry and academia.

The industry consortium, as part of the CSR activity, will pick up a pool of graduates to build soft skills and other technical skills,' he said, adding that city-based Cyient Ltd, promoted by BVR Mohan Reddy, had agreed to train 1,000 such graduates.

In order to project the city as a leisure and lifestyle destination, Rao said, the government has floated a '52 weeks, 52 events' concept to create a calendar of events. 'We are talking to an event management company to host south India's film festival here,' he said, adding that the city was keen on hosting its own sunburn festival.

The upcoming ITIR project is expected to bring in Rs 2.18 lakh crore investments and provide direct employment to 15 lakh people and indirect employment to 35 lakh over the next 20 years.

Corpus Fund for IT Entrepreneurship

The government of Telangana will set up a corpus fund to promote IT entrepreneurship in the city, said Pradeep Chandra, special chief secretary in the department of industries. 'We are willing to set up the fund, given there's a matching contribution from the private sector.

If angel investors, private equity players and venture capitalists come forward, the proposed corpus can be substantial. There's money available and prospective companies will have to go through a rigid screening process to avail the fund,' he said.