Startup Village, the first technology business incubator in the country under the public-private participation model, has added yet another feather to its cap by winning the National Award for Technology Business Incubator, instituted by the government of India.
Sanjay Vijayakumar and Pranav Kumar, the chairman and the CEO of the Kochi-based business incubator, received the award from Union Minister of Science and Technology Harsh Vardhan at a function in New Delhi on Monday. The award carries a purse of Rs. 3 lakh and a trophy.
Big boost
Mr. Vijayakumar said the award would boost the Startup Village’s plan to launch a billion-dollar campus start-up in India by 2022, when the incubator will complete 10 years of operations.
According to him, the initiative marked a paradigm shift in the public-private participation model, which was hitherto practised in the infrastructure sector. “Instead, we focus on mobile-internet innovations by primarily incubating student start-ups,” he said, pointing out about the experiment was “unique” also because the incubator was outside premier institutes such as IITs and IIMs.
He said the Startup Village model was proving to be a force-multiplier for youth in tier-2 and 3 cities. “Multiple states are reaching out to us as there is potential for start-up villages there,” he added.
