STPI Bangalore to offer plug and play incubation stations

Kavitha Vivek & KP Sethunath, Bangalore,
October 08, 2002

This move will also see a number of international technology labs from Sweden, Israel, US and Ireland joining hands with the incubation initiative to facilitate lab-to-lab technology collaboration.

STPI-B director BV Naidu said the technology park (Cyber Park) project which L&T was putting up would provide 42,000 sq feet of space to STPI in lieu of five acres of land that the latter would provide to L&T for setting up the park.

Out of the total built-up area of 500,000 sq ft in the Park, 42,000 sq ft will be used exclusively for incubation actvities.

"STPI, GoI and GoK will utilise this 42,000 sq feet of space to set up a state-of-the-art centre for technology incubation. This project is expected to get on the road within 18-months time," Naidu said.

STPI-B has in the past incubated over 15 companies including the likes of Infosys in its early days.

"Now the needs of the companies are also changing and they need to have better equipped places to work from. The idea is that we offer them the necessary infrastructure and as they grow, bring them into the STPI fold," Naidu added.

Currently, STPI is working on setting up a five-member industry committee to drive this concept together with industry-academia collaboration.

Venture capitalists will also be roped in to join the initiative by funding the start-ups across various technology areas.

"The concept behind bringing in other international technology labs is to foster lab to lab collaboration and join hands in the intellectual property (IP) commercialisation process," Naidu said.

The Indian players incubated at the centre would also have an opportunity to work with the foreign labs and help commercialise the latter's IP, thereby giving scope for Indian companies to utilise their IP building expertise.

This initiative was expected to provide a big boost to the small IT/technology players, he added.

Source: The Financial Express