The Telangana Government's State Innovation Cell's latest initiative 'T.CoWork' aims to bring all the co-working spaces and incubators existing in the city under one network. Through this, it aspires to help early stage startups in the city save their precious time and focus on their core product or service as they can get access to market connections, business or strategy mentors, and investors all under one roof.

According to IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan, the state government has already rolled out the innovation policy and is currently on a lookout for a chief innovation officer. He also added, that the government is very focused about the whole initiative and wants to make sure that the impact is felt at ground level. In fact, the government has also set aside huge funds for making this a humongous success.

Ranjan also added that they would ensure that the Hyderabad's USP as a startup hub, which is the availability of high-quality infrastructure at relatively lower cost than other cities in the country, is diligently followed even while providing T.CoWork facilities to startups.

He also highlighted the need of incubators and co-working spaces along with academic institutions to instil an atmosphere of support for startups and push them towards better innovation.

Talking about the need for T.CoWork, Ramesh Loganathan, professor, co-innovation at IIIT-H, who is now leading the State Innovation Cell (SIC) said that some co-working spaces in the city have been wanting to do something fruitful for the startups with them. However, getting investors, mentors and organising talks was proving to be a big, daunting task for a majority of them, mainly due to their small size. This is where SIC's T.CoWork comes into picture.

According to Ramesh Loganathan, who is the interim chief innovation officer, T.CoWork will seek to continue the collaboration of incubators and co-working spaces with academic institutions. Its action plan to make this possible is to roll out shared support, regular monthly meet-ups to build a rich network and one meeting every six months where startups can connect with mentors, industry partners and potential investors.

He believes that T.CoWork will create a platform for discovery of startup. They are numerous startups working in the city currently, but they government doesn't know where or on what they are working on. T.CoWork can help in documenting these early startups and make it an easy task for the prospective investors and mentors.

Loganathan also revealed that they're also considering launching workshops once in every two months where it would provide help and advice to startups in the idea stage and early stage.

While T.CoWork is still taking off, the State Innovation Cell is reportedly already ready with its next big initiative 'T.Enablers', which will be like a one-stop shop for all startup resources.
Advertisements

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post
Like this content? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get latest updates.