Visakhapatnam: Nasscom workshops mentor startups

Visakhapatnam: To create a vibrant startup ecosystem and also bridge the skill gap in the city, National Association of Software and Services Companies is rolling out one-on-one interactive workshops, webinars and penetrating the colleges with new courses and mentorship programme. 

After the Startup Village left the management responsibility of start-up Incubation Centre, Nasscom has been mentoring startups in its warehouse at Rushikonda IT SEZ under its 10,000 startup programme. It has impacted 13 startups so far both physically and virtually.

When asked how start-up ecosystem could be created in the port city Nasscom (AP and Telangana) Regional Director Srikanth Srinivasan said, “Physical infrastructure is here and social infrastructure is building up and third is the talent which is sort of oxygen for the start-up industry. Talent is available in the city or state, but we have to explore and nurture them properly. That is why we are reaching out to colleges to shape up the mind of the students at the early stage.”

“Skill is a big gap. So, under Sector Skill Council joint venture between Nasscom and NSDC, we have introduced Analytics and Cyber Security new semester courses of international level in JNTU-K & A covering about 35 colleges. We will be introducing many such courses in the coming days,” he said.

It is providing startup kit which includes free cloud space in Google, Azure worth $750 and also Amazon web services and many credit based services. 

When asked about why the number of startups incubated in the warehouse has come down, “Out of 40 applications, five were selected in the first batch. Ingenuity and Uniqueness of the product is very important,” said Nasscom 10K startup project manager for AP and TS, Vijay Bawra. 

“We have conducted sessions on GST, IP protection management, product development, product mindset, business model canvass and digital marketing on social websites,” he said. 

The hot startups could also get a chance to visit Silicon Valley under the Innotrack programme. Every year, Nasscom will select 40 startups, who will be taken to the Silicon Valley to interact with the top entrepreneurs and bring back disruptive knowledge. In the last two years, not a single startup from AP however made it to the programme.