 "Entrepreneurship boost: Karnataka govt to set up incubation centres in 9 colleges")
The Government of Karnataka (GoK) announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with nine engineering colleges in the state to set up new age incubation centres to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.
The announcement was made at a press conference held by Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology of the government of Karnataka. The government said that these colleges will receive funding support of up to Rs 40 lakh per college over a period of three years.
Non-profit organization, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and National Entrepreneur Network (NEN) and National Association for Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) are associated with the program and will provide a mentor cloud of 50 mentors, local and remote for each of these colleges - a first for the startup community in India.
Apart from this, two-day events or Hackathons are slated to take place in September and October 2014 at Bagalkot, Tumkur and Dharwad. As many as 30 students per college will participate covering teams from all nine colleges. Once selected, each team will get funded up to Rs 3 lakh to develop their idea as a means to set up student-based companies with locally relevant innovative technologies.
Two more initiatives were announced at the press meet today. Fortune 100 company Honeywell is going to set up a campus in Bengaluru with an investment of about Rs 1,400 crore. The new campus will be spread across 5.4 acres. Honeywell’s investment proposal will be placed before a high level committee of the state government for clearance shortly. Globally Honeywell has about 21,000 engineers, of which more than 5,000 are located here.
To further boost its efforts at making Bengaluru the first city in India to have complete coverage of public Wi-Fi, part free and part-charged for premium services, GoK is expanding its coverage of hot spots. Free public Wi-Fi has been now additionally provided in MG Road, Brigade Road, Shanthinagar Bus Station, Kormangala Bus Station, Yeshwanthpur Bus Station, CMH Road -100ft. Road Junction in Banglore; City Bus Station and Rural Bus Station in Mysore; and DC Office and Vidyagiri in Bagalkot.
The free public Wi-Fi in Bagalkot will be launched on 15 August, 2014. The Wi-Fi facility will be shortly available in Kengeri TTMC, Stellite Bus Station - Mysore Road, Shivajinagar, Jayanagar, Banashankri and Vijaynagar. The Wi-Fi facility has been provided for free of cost by M/s. Dvois Broadband Pvt. Ltd, with bandwidth sped of 512 kbps. In Bengaluru alone, on an average about 1,000 users have been recorded per day.
The Department of IT is partnering with leading e-commerce majors such as Snapdeal and Amazon to leverage their marketplace capabilities to take thousands of MSMEs to market. GOK-Snapdeal MSME is almost ready and is undergoing testing, while work is commencing with others alongside. The Karnataka government is using its convening power to bring on a common platform various SMEs and playing the role of a facilitator with the e-commerce majors.
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