T’gana’s innovation cell launches fellowship prog, to complement T-Hub, other initiatives

The Fellowship Program is a one-year program conceptualised to enable professionals to work with the Government and help build an innovation-driven economy.
T’gana’s innovation cell launches fellowship prog, to complement T-Hub, other initiatives
T’gana’s innovation cell launches fellowship prog, to complement T-Hub, other initiatives
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The Telangana State Innovation Cell, which was set up last year, has launched a first-of-its-kind fellowship program for young professionals from diverse backgrounds to work with the Government in driving innovation in the State. This initaitve, will complement other initiatives of the state such as T-Hub. 

The program was formally launched by IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Friday and the first cohort of Innovation Fellows were inducted.

The Fellowship Program is a one-year program, conceptualized to enable professionals to work with the Government, towards the vision of building an innovation-driven economy in the State.

“In today’s world, innovation is of prime significance. Innovation improves the quality of life by improving productivity, reducing cost, and increasing wages. Countries that have nurtured innovation in their societies have leapfrogged their economies and quality of life. Telangana Government is committed to building a strong innovation-driven economy in the State… The State Innovation Cell’s goal is to make Telangana a land of innovators. The Cell will work towards building strong awareness about the importance of innovation, and I hope this will result in creating at least one innovator in each family,” Minister of ITE&C K. T Rama Rao said.

The selection process was highly competitive where less than 1% of the applicants made it to the final selection. The candidates have been selected based on an extensive process including resume shortlisting, essay evaluation, and personal interviews.  The cohort includes Entrepreneurs, Engineers, Social development professionals, students from journalism and arts and a lawyer with each of them having their own ideas to nurture the culture of innovation in the State.

“This is a unique initiative launched by the Government to promote innovation in the State, and will complement our other initiatives such as T-Hub, RICH, T-Works, WE-Hub etc. but will focus more on innovation as a whole and across the State and not just in Hyderabad and hi-tech startups. As with our other initiatives, we brought in highly motivated individuals from the private sector and enabled them to deliver with minimum interference from the Government. Our focus now will be on studying the progress of the first cohort over the next few months to refine the program in future,” Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, ITE&C and I&C said.

A few projects the Innovation Fellows are leading include working with schools to promote a culture of innovation thinking, kick starting innovation and entrepreneurship activity at District level, promoting startup incubators, creating mentor ecosystem and promoting grass-root innovators.

The Telangana State Innovation Cell has invited several partners including Ashoka Innovators for the Public (Ashoka.org) to build the culture of changemaking in the state.  

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