Double the number from last year.
By The American Bazaar Staff
BANGALORE: The government of Kerala will sponsor 10 student entrepreneurs on a trip to Silicon Valley, as part of a program to foster business development between Kerala and the US.
The Startup Village to Silicon Valley (SV Square) program was launched last year, and saw five Kerala-based students visit Silicon Valley to gain insight into what it takes to run an IT start-up.
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy told local media that the experience proved invaluable to those students, and now the Kerala government is doubling the number of young would-be business owners that it will send this year.
Startup Village, which was founded in 2012, is a non-profit business incubator based in Kochi, which initially planned to launch 1,000 new technology companies by 2022, and have at least one of them turn into the India’s next billion-dollar IT goliath. As of now, Startup Village has been responsible for starting or supporting some 600 firms over the last two years, and now the Kerala government has expanded its goal to 3,000 companies by 2020.
While Bangalore is now considered to be India’s equivalent of Silicon Valley – and Hyderabad and Pune make their own strong cases for being Silicon Valley successors, too – the Kerala government wants Kochi to be part of the conversation. Fifteen acres of land in Kochi has been set aside for the Startup Village, which has been described as a mini-Silicon Valley by Kerala’s Principal IT Secretary, P.H. Kurian.
The Kerala government has not announced which 10 students will represent the state on its sponsored Silicon Valley trip, but Chandy said that by August of this year, the Kerala government will have established a permanent center in the US. This will be used for future visits, as a place to coordinate future SV Square visits.
The state’s government will also purportedly be meeting with angel investors in Silicon Valley, to generate interest for Startup Village companies looking for investment capital. Students who travel to Silicon Valley, on the SV Square trip, will also have the opportunity to interact with Silicon Valley honchos themselves.