HYDERABAD: When T-Hub becomes a reality on Thursday, a community of start-ups, corporates, incubators, accelerators, experts, investors, events and a sustainable market is what is aimed at. According to Srinivas Kollipara, the COO of T-Hub, the absence of such an ecosystem was the reason for startups like Redbus and Bookpal, which took shape in Hyderabad, to move out to cities like Bengaluru. “In less than two years, we were able to incubate up to 65 startups at IIIT-Hyderabad incubator,” he said.
According to him, creation of such an ecosystem takes not less than 20 years, and in Hyderabad the same was being created in no time. Corporates like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, HP and Amazon will deploy their teams which would work with the startups. Though an initial seed fund of `10 crore is donated by the government, the aim was to augment the fund capital to `100 crore.
“We have corporates who have expressed willingness to invest. This will be independent funding by companies for profit. If they are interested in a concept, they would invest with an aim to make money,” he said.
According to him, the applicants at T-Hub could be categorised into three. One, those with work experience of 3-5 years. Two, those who are well settled in life and have vast work experience. And lastly, students serious about academic projects.
President of the Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association, Ramesh Loganathan, who has been associated with T-Hub even before its conceptualisation pointed out that Hyderabad had a great focus on product development companies till 2000, post which the focus was shifted to service-oriented companies. T-Hub, according to him, is physically and virtually an incubator of incubators with a strong startup ecosystem. “In a year’s time, Hyderabad will be the best place to have a company. Factors like talent, industry, support environment, network, cost of living, experts are all in our advantage ,” said Loganathan.