Sunrise Startup Village, first in Andhra Pradesh, was kicked off on Thursday with MobMe of Kochi Startup Village organising a bootcamp for hundreds of college students.

As a first step, MobMe selected 50 startups for grooming. Memoranda of understanding were signed on the first day with five youngsters. The agreements were distributed by Minister for IT Palle Raghunatha Reddy at a function organised at the Incubation Tower built by APIIC at Rushikonda IT Special Economic Zone in the presence of Minister for HRD Ganta Srinivasa Rao, Vizag MP K. Haribabu, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Ajay Sawhney, IT Advisor J. Satyanarayana and Kochi Start-up Village CEO Pranav Kumar.

Describing the launching of start-up village as a red letter day in the history of the State, Mr. Raghunatha Reddy said Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was credited with launching IT, Electronic and Innovation and Start-up Policy to encourage entrepreneurship and investors.

He said they were doling out Rs.60,000 concession towards land cost for every job created, 25 per cent discount in power tariff to all and 50 per cent for SC, ST and women entrepreneurs. He said they would develop an IT Investment Region in Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Anantapur, 10 IT hubs and 20 Electronic Manufacturing Clusters.

Stating that they had created 50,000 square ft. of space for incubators in Visakhapatnam, 25,000 at Kakinada and 10,000 at Tirupati, Mr. Reddy said “Hyderabad is capital of Telangana and Chandrababu Naidu has become the capital of AP as investors during his overseas trips have come forward with proposals to invest in the State.”

Mr. Satyanarayana said 500 startups would start by December 2015 as the government had created seed capital of Rs.100 crore to fund the incubators.

ITIR will be developed in Vizag, Tirupati and Anantapur, says IT Minister

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities / Special Correspondent / Visakhapatnam – January 30th, 2015