The Telangana State Innovation Cell, intended to nurture and enable the early stage startup ecosystem, commenced its operations on Wednesday.
The State Innovation Cell (SIC) announced under Telangana State Innovation policy is expected to benefit pharma, agriculture and other sectors.
State Information Technology and Industry Minister K.T. Rama Rao said that with T-Hub and Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad (RICH) getting international acclaim, the formation of SIC was a step forward.
The SIC is currently located in IIIT Hyderabad and led in the interim by Ramesh Loganathan, professor co-innovation, IIIT Hyderabad.
The scope of SIC is to nurture and enable the early stage startup ecosystem from seeding new start-ups to nurturing them through taking their start-up to market (angel stage). The cell will be the single window for administering all incentives announced in the innovation policy for start-ups and incubators, said an official statement.
The immediate focus of the SIC is to document, network and amplify the early stage support ecosystem.
The early stage start-ups will be provided business/strategy mentoring, market connection and investor access. The endeavour is to direct all early stage start-ups applying to T-Hub to a participating, qualified co-working space and through the space enable the start-ups to grow to initial market traction and be ready for angel stage support offered by T-Hub and others, it added.
The Telangana government is also launching T-Works, a startup incubator to encourage hardware startups.