Kochi ( Kerala) April 8 2012: India’s first telecom business incubator under a public private partnership (PPP) model has come up in Kochi, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, within the KINFRA Tech Park at Kalamassery. Called Startup Village -- Indian Telecom Innovation Hub, it flows from partnership between KINFRA, the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) of the Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology (DST) – and Kochi-headquartered Mobile Media & Entertainment focussed Value Added Services player MobMe.
Startup Village will target student startups from college campuses and hopes to incubate at least 1,000 product start ups in the next decade.
Sijo Kuruvilla, CEO of Startup Village, says that the first batch of startups are being inducted this month, even as the campus is equipped with 4G networks and advanced telecom test labs.
Sanjay Vijayakumar, CEO of MobME, believes the initiative, will provide a platform for the next generation of entrepreneurs and special efforts would be made to woo the non resident Keralite community for support.
The Rs 1 billion public-private is an attempt to o emulate the incubators in the original Sillicon Valley in the US and will hopefully transform Kerala into a 'Silicon Coast', said the state’s Chief Minister, Ommen Chandy in Delhi last week.
S. Gopalakrishnan, executive co-chairman of Infosys, has agreed to be  the Chief Mentor for startups in Kerala. Others who were named last week as mentors or investors in the state’s high tech incubation efforts include Kiran Karnik, former NASSCOM President; Sharad Sharma, former Yahoo India CEO; R Ganesh Lakshminarayan, managing director, Dell India; and Arun Kumar, global board member of analysts KPMG.

For a few days, we carry a video on MobMe in our TechVideo slot