Telangana Plans To Fund Start-Ups Through A Technology Development Bank (TDB)

The newly formed Telangana government is building the country’s biggest incubation facility and creating a technology development bank to woo start-ups to the capital Hyderabad, whose image has taken a beating due to the Telangana statehood movement.

The technology development bank (TDB) will provide funding to innovative start-ups in both hardware and software sectors, state information technology minister K.T. Rama Rao said on Thursday.

The incubation facility, spread over 100,000 sq. ft, will be located in Gachibowli locality that also houses the offices and research labs of top information technology companies such as Microsoft Corp., CA Technologies Inc., Capgemini S.A., Infosys Ltd, and Wipro Ltd.

The initiative will involve the city’s two premier educational institutes, the Indian School of Business (ISB) and International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-Hyderabad, and will be functional in 6-8 months, Rama Rao said.

“It is in the drawing board stage. The IT department is actively working on it and is working out the modalities,” he said on the sidelines of the first edition of the India Gadget Expo in Hyderabad.

The idea of an incubation facility took birth during Rama Rao’s visit to ISB immediately after he assumed office, according to an executive at the business school. The incubation facility is expected to come up in the IIIT-Hyderabad campus that already runs the city’s biggest tech incubator. Twelve of the 40 start-ups currently incubated in IIIT-Hyderabad are seed funded.

“Discussions have been going on. A lot of details still need to be fleshed out,” Sriram Gopalakrishnan, director of marketing and communications said. While IIIT-Hyderabad will be the technology backbone to the incubator, ISB, which runs a separate incubation facility, will help with business and market strategy.

The brand image of Hyderabad has taken a severe beating over the past five years due to frequent shutdowns during the Telangana statehood movement. Ending years of uncertainty, the union government finally created the country’s 29th state on 2 June. As per the terms of bifurcation, Hyderabad will be the joint capital of Telangana and the new Andhra Pradesh for a period of 10 years, while the latter builds its own capital. Thereafter, it will continue as the capital of Telangana.

The Telangana government is also wooing hardware makers to set up manufacturing facilities in two electronic hardware manufacturing clusters spread over 600-700 acres in Maheshwaram mandal on the outskirts of Hyderabad. While some local players have shown interest in setting up their manufacturing facilities in these clusters, which fall under the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR), the government is trying to attract international players too, Rama Rao said.

Courtesy: LiveMint