India's biggest startup incubator opens in Kerala's Kochi

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday inaugurated here the country`s biggest startup incubator. Housed in a 1.8-lakh square-feet facility, it has incubation setups across a string of segments in modern technology.

The Integrated Startup Complex, set up under the Kerala Startup Mission (KSM), has ultra modern facilities, like "Maker Village" dedicated to promotion of hardware startups, "Bionest" for promoting medical technologies, BRINC which is the country`s first international accelerator for hardware startups, BRIC which aids developing solutions for cancer diagnosis and care, and a Centre of Excellence set up by the industry majors.

"Overall, the Kerala government is working for the state to have a total area of 2.3 crore sq.ft of IT space (up from 1.3 crore sq.ft last year). We are also planning to give direct jobs to 2.5 lakh in IT," said Vijayan and added that the government is working to ensure that information technology fosters social development.

After the completion of three more projects, Kerala will have startup and incubation space of 5 lakh sq.ft, which will be largest of these type in the world.

M. Sivasankar, Secretary, IT (Kerala), pointed out: "This has never happened in our country, where it usually takes a couple of years for an incubator to get the whole area occupied. The first three floors of the new complex have been furnished, while the rest of the floors have already got allotted to various startups," said Sivasankar.