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STPI has launched several initiatives including Centres of Entrepreneurship and Next Generation Incubation Scheme to foster tech startups focused on emerging technologies.

Aligned with the vision of the government for achieving $1 trillion economy, STPI has launched several initiatives including Centres of Entrepreneurship (CoEs) and Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS) to foster tech startups focused on emerging technologies by providing them with a robust collaborative platform to realise their unique ideas into path-breaking technology products both in software and hardware domains, Arvind Kumar, Director General, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), tells Arpit Gupta in an interaction with ETGovernment.

Excerpts:

How can India become Atmanirbhar in emerging technologies and new age devices? What should be the roadmap for a trillion-dollar digital economy?

The government has been playing a transformational role in formulating futuristic reforms to make India Atmanirbhar. The flagship initiatives like Make in India and PLI schemes for the manufacturing sector can catalyse India’s economic growth by attracting FDI, strengthening the domestic manufacturing ecosystem, boosting exports, and creating immense employment opportunities for the skilled talent pool. The recently launched Rs 76,000 crore PLI scheme for the semiconductor manufacturing and the total fiscal support of Rs 2,30,000 crore for the entire ESDM supply chain can significantly galvanise the electronics manufacturing ecosystem and push India to rise above the ESDM value chain.

The HSDC Scheme proposed at an estimated outlay of around Rs 10,500 crore is expected to augment additional capacity of 2000 MW (which denotes the amount of energy consumed in a data centre and eventually marks the capacity of the data centre) by 2027. This will make India a Global Data Centre Hub. Support initiative of making Aatmanirbhar Bharat by promoting indigenous products in Data Centre space is projected to attract Rs 3.52 lakh crore and generate around 1.2 lakh direct and indirect jobs.

The Digital India Infoway - “The Network of Networks” is expected to be the next generation secure network with high speed, redundancy, robust architecture & security, continuously updated with emerging technologies and would be a high-end multi-tier, multi-technology research, education and eGovernance network.

The National Language Translation Mission launched by the government can play a pivotal role in large scale translation from English to Indian languages and vice versa by enhancing digital inclusion across linguistic diversities. Speech to Speech and Text to Text Machine Translation systems for major Indian languages will help faster localization of technologies and boost inclusion.

Prime Minister’s vision for “One Nation, One Digital Platform” has resulted in the initiation of several public digital platforms including National Digital Health Platform, National Digital Education Architecture, National Digital Agriculture Platform, and Future Skills PRIME / Online Education. These platforms will further boost the digital economy.

Could you share some of the key initiatives of STPI which will enable achieve the trillion-dollar digital economy goal?

Aligned with the vision of the government for achieving $1 trillion economy, STPI has also launched several initiatives such as Centres of Entrepreneurship (CoEs) and Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS) to foster tech startups focused on emerging technologies by providing them with a robust collaborative platform to realize their unique ideas into path-breaking technology products both in software and hardware domains.

Till date, STPI has launched 20 CoEs in emerging technologies including, but not limited to AI, IoT, Big Data, Blockchain, etc. Such initiatives can further revolutionize the tech startup ecosystem in the country and accelerate innovation-led entrepreneurship in the country, which will further help in contributing to the vision of a $1 trillion economy.

India has already achieved global laurels in the software services field. Time is opportune for India to focus on products, semiconductor design, electronics system design, innovations in emerging technology domains, and unify platforms for delivery of government services to the citizenry to become a $1 trillion digital economy during the next five years.

What challenges do you see in the next era of digital India and smart governance and taking it to the last mile? What is the way forward to digitally empower India to make it more resilient, competitive, and future-ready?

Over the last few years India is witnessing a transformation in its digital footprint and governance. The government has undertaken several path-breaking initiatives like Digital India to expand the digital footprint of the country while delivering citizen-centric services. India stacks such as AADHAAR and UPI have played a major role in boosting digital adoption in the country. Let me share some numbers. These numbers itself speaks a lot about the digital profile of India.

According to a report published by TRAI in August 2021, the total number of internet subscribers in India has gone up to 82.5 crore. UPI recorded 461 crore transactions in January 2022, which is 1% higher than the 456 crore transactions recorded in December 2021. The transaction volume has also increased by 1% from Rs 8.26 lakh crore to Rs 8.31 lakh crore. Direct Transfer Benefit (DBT) to citizens has been leveraging the AADHAR-based money transfer to the bank accounts of citizens. Today, India has the largest number of digital identities i.e., 132.4 crore AADHAAR card holders. Since April 1, 2021, over Rs 4.53 lakh crore has been provided to the beneficiaries under the DBT through 544 crore transactions. 150+ applications leverage AADHAAR authentication services. 4.47 lakh Common Services Centres (CSCs) of which 3.48 lakh CSCs are at Gram Panchayat level are taking 380+ government services to the locality of villagers.

Although a lot of challenges are solved however challenges like digital divide, digital fraud and data privacy needs to be addressed further.

While the government has been doing its bit to expand digital and financial inclusion at the grassroots, it’s essential to bridge the digital divide between urban and rural populations. During the pandemic lockdown, most of the students living in remote areas of the country could not access the digital classes because of unavailability of devices and connectivity. At this juncture, the tech industry and startups must think about building disruptive innovations to enhance affordability of tech products & services and empower the people living at the bottom of the economic pyramid to access the facilities easily.

What’s concerning now is the growing instances of cyberthreats and digital frauds as we move forwards with digital adoption. We must think about building robust digital infrastructure with the highest level of security standards to keep the digital revolution leaping forward.

Another critical factor is data protection. Data has enormous economic value. We need new modes to protect data and privacy in the realm of a hyperconnected world. We should keep upgrading our existing platforms and build new platforms and solutions driven by Blockchain and other cutting-edge technologies to ensure trust, transparency, traceability, and security of digital information.

COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology. How has the industry used technologies like AI/ML, Blockchain, AR/VR, IoT and Cloud and other technology-based applications to mitigate the pandemic challenge?

Pandemic brought disruptions across all aspects of life; however, the Indian technology industry left no stone unturned to meet the exigency of contemporary requirements. Almost all the technology-based solutions and products have used emerging technologies such as AI, ML, IoT, Cloud, AR/VR etc. to bring breakthrough innovations.

First, as you know companies faced challenges in the physical ecosystem and shifted to work from home models. Now the entire work environment went digital by using cloud-based products and solutions. The change realized on ground was earlier unthinkable and most of the companies were even not in favour of considering work from home a viable option for running operations in a seamless manner. This new normal is going to be a practice even in the post-pandemic period.

Second, industry started a wide range of solutions like touchless transactions and sensor-powered sanitization and technologies that helped industries in different verticals to continue their operations and deliver services & products to the customers.

This pandemic has given impetus to the technology adoption which otherwise might have taken many more years to reach this level. What’s essentially required now is to focus on digital inclusion and digital accessibility to democratise the adoption of technology across the demographics. The legacy of the Indian IT industry, growing tech-entrepreneurial ecosystem, and rising tech startups can play a pivotal role in boosting India’s technology evolution by creating patents and building products for India and the world, making India a technology product nation.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), under the administrative control of the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), promotes innovation and research and development (R&D), and is eyeing to increase data centers footprint in India. In an interaction with ETTelecom's Muntazir Abbas, STPI Director General, Arvind Kumar speaks on Center for Entrepreneurship and EMC 2.0 schemes, and said that the organisation is planning to set up new data centres. Edited excerpts.

What are STPI objectives, and your focus areas?

STPI basically started with the concept of Softex form. In the IT/ITes industry , if they want to export the software, they need some certificate by which they can export the software and legitimize the money which is required by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). We provide a one-stop solution. Now, our focus is more on the Center for Entrepreneurship. So, we are developing the Center of Entrepreneurship all over the country. We have planned 25. We have done the 20th one in Lucknow, which is called MedTech on medical products. So, all Center of Entrepreneurship are domain specific.

Do you have any timeline for that?

I think by the end of this calendar year, we will be able to complete 25.

What is the industry's and the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) role in driving this?

So, there are two schemes, one is directly the Center of Entrepreneurship (CoE) which is being driven by the STPI. This model is basically industry-driven, we got some partners in the form of let us say state governments. We appoint a Chief Operating Officer (COO) there. He undertakes the day-to-day activity of the CoE. So, we are not intervening day to day. We just established it, arranged the fund for them, arranged the equipment and they are working independently. So, anybody who wants to do some sort of startup in medical electronics or health informatics, they can get the incubation space there and they can start it. So, all Center of Entrepreneurships are domain-specific like we are planning one on blockchain technology in Gurgaon. We have eight CoEs in the Northeast, a combination of that is called Octane.

Apart from this, MeitY also has some plans for the Center of Entrepreneurship, it is called NGIS (next generation incubation scheme) that is fully funded by MeitY.

How is this different from CoE?

This is different from CoE. In the NGIS scheme, MeitY has said that they want in Tier2/Tier3 cities like Prayagraj, where the government has given some Rs 90 crores to STPI. MeitY has also asked to give seed funds to the innovator. So we also provide Rs 25 lakh as a seed fund to them. So, this model is the same, but the funding scheme is different.

But how much total outlay for the CoE?

Every CoE has its own budget. On an average we can say it is somewhere around 15 to 20 crores for five years.

Following the recent budgetary proposals that also talks about digital currency, how are you focussing on blockchain?

We have some programs called Chunauti 1.0, Chunauti 2.0. It's called an open competition program. So, we continue to have the competition program and these people come to us, give us presentations for pitching so they pitch. We have state level and Central committees and they have to pitch in their project.

Now the digital currency is the new concept. If anyone comes to us, and says, as a digital currency, this is their product. And we see this is in line with the government of India's objective and if this will result in something which is required for the country then, we allow it and handholding is done by us. We just look into whether its ideas are workable. Blockchain is the technology which is good for trusted networks or for making something which is called, the ledger technology. It can also be used very much in the FinTech domain.

How is EMC 2.0 different from the previous version?

EMC 1.0 was a little limited, so we have increased the scope in EMC 2.0 . In EMC 2.0, you can work somewhere outside. So usually, in the EMC 1.0, private players and small units were present, but in EMC 2.0 they have ensured that only the government bodies (public government venture) but there has to be some involvement of the government out there. In EMC 2.0, at least 10 to 20% of the entire place has to be taken up by a bigger unit and only if that unit is there, only then will we allow it.

How many such clusters are there currently?

In EMC 2.0, we have two such clusters already approved with a proposed area of around 1,000 acres and the cost of that will be around Rs 1,400 crores. That will be the development cost. Then the units will come, they will do their own investment, the anchor unit will come.

Where are these two clusters?

These clusters are Haryana and other in Andhra Pradesh, Vizag district. Three applications which are in the pipeline and in the process of approval are from Telangana, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra. We have also received four more applications from Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Bihar which are in the process of submitting it. So, there is a traction around that and we are ensuring that there has to be a very clear-cut success criteria only then governments spend their money out there.

So the government is also giving subsidies?

50% of their development cost will be borne by the EMC.

What are your data centre plans?

We want to increase our footprint in data centers actually. Something we want to do in the data centers. We have data centers at four places- Chennai, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, and Mohali. We have a mid-sized or even a small sized data center, but we want to increase our footprint there and that is one thing which we are looking at immediately.

What are these incubation centers?

These centers mean we have incubation space there. Any young innovative entrepreneur if they want to develop software, they want 5-10 seats, like 5-10 workstations, we provide that space to them at a very nominal rate. So, let us say 2000 rupees per month per seat where you will have electricity, water, everything, so they can come, develop their software and start their company so, if you require a 8-10 workstation for starting company then you're not required to take a big space, pay the rent, electricity, lot of other problems. So, you will have ready-made built-in space and you will just come. It’s called Incubation Center, we call plug and play centres.

So, 62 you already have?

We have 62 centres and 22 are in the pipeline.

3 new electronic clusters proposals under consideration: STPI chief

"Three applications have been received for setting up electronic manufacturing clusters (EMC) in the states of Telangana, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra which are being reviewed for approval," Arvind Kumar, director-general, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) said, adding that states such as Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Bihar are in the process to apply for the Central scheme.

The Software Technology Park of India (STPI), which has an extensive network around the country, will play the role of facilitator for data centre entrepreneurs and investors, and facilitate their engagement with the States for approvals, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY).

He was in the city to interact with industry members – start-ups, MSME/SMEs and other companies – on the Draft National Data Centre and Cloud Policy.

“Today, I learnt about single point of contact as more and more people want the facilitation at the State level,” he told newspersons after the meeting. There were many ‘high quality’ suggestions around Cloud, its security, the entry and exit on to the Cloud, portability and interface between multiple clouds, he added.

Energy efficient & sustainable

The National Data Centre & Cloud Policy intends to facilitate setting up of energy efficient, sustainable and green data centres. However, to do this, the State governments have to do some work including service level agreements (SLAs) from the discoms, and between the discom and the company.

The governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are keen to pursue this investment. This is like the Y2K movement for the entire digital space. “In the next 1-2 years, the States, start-ups and investors who make a move and pursue these opportunities will only succeed,” he added.

The policy’s objectives include accelerating the growth of the data centres and Cloud services and encouraging the usage of indigenous platforms/solutions in the data centre, said a release.

Growth projection of digital economy

The size of the digital economy in India is estimated to grow exponentially from around $200 billion to $1 trillion by 2025-26. At present, India has 499 MW installed power capacity for data centres and is projected to grow to 1,007 MW by 2023.

Under the hyperscale data centre scheme, the government is targeting investment of ₹3 lakh crore in the next five years, said Amitesh Kumar Sinha, Joint Secretary, MeitY. The proposed draft policy intends to accelerate the growth in the project in the projected data centre capacity with a capacity addition of 2,000 MW by 2027, he said.

To a question on cybersecurity, the Minister said that presently 80 crore Indians are using the Internet, and in the next two years 1.2 billion Indians will be using it for various purposes from studies to work to entertainment. In this aspect, cybersecurity plays a vital role and the government of India has created many institutions to make the internet safe and secure, he said.

On the semiconductor industry, the Minister said that this government has committed around $30 billion in to expanding the electronics and semiconductor ecosystem. This is an unprecedented investment by the Centre in to manufacturing, hi-tech and digital space. Every leading name in electronic manufacturing is in India. This includes Samsung, Foxconn, Pegaton and Vistron.

“We expect the same to be in the semiconductor space. Some State governments pursuing these opportunities, investment and jobs include Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana for electronic manufacturing,” he said.

On the recent workers’ issue at Foxconn plant in Chennai, the Minister said, “Those who need to have the discussion, had the discussion. These are important investments for the State and the country. We must all do our best to make sure that these investments grow, expand and create jobs. I publicly tweeted about that, and don’t want to say anything today.”

Gaming Fund under the umbrella of Hyderabad headquartered SucSEED Indovation Fund continues to work with various partners to discover and support gaming start-ups with seed funding and organize mentorship support from successful Gaming Founders & experienced Influencers.

SucSEED Indovation Fund and STPI led IMAGE CoE had announced their collaboration earlier to aid the gaming startup ecosystem. Gaming startups would be incubated with STPI IMAGE COE and SucSEED Innovation Fund would invest in the select Gaming Startups from the cohort. Up to $100,000 in funding will be offered for early-stage product development. Several successful Gaming Founders have joined the SucSEED Indovation Fund to create a Gaming Sub-Fund for this purpose and they bring the immense experience as value-add alongside their capital. United Gamers Hideout (UGH) ESports and Stareout games are the two such startups from Cohort-1 that have received funding from SucSEED Indovation Gaming Fund through this partnership.

UGH creates innovative esports IPs that enables professional gaming in India. Unlike other esports leagues, UGH offers a unique dual system of talent hunt feeding into a franchise style league. Providing a platform for esports teams from around the world to scout players for professional contracts to represent them in our new franchised league. UGH has already established a strong event roadmap for the next two years including tournament licenses and strategic partnerships.

United Gamers Hideout was established in September 2019 by Abhisek Moharana with the vision to create the path for millions of aspiring players to play professionally and represent Indian at global leve

Abhisek Moharana, Founder and CEO at United Gamers Hideout said, “In spite of the pandemic we have seen a huge growth in professional gaming in India. UGH is filling the gap in the market with regards to upskilling the aspiring gamers and creating the high quality content the esports community craves for”. He further added that “The seed funding we raised from SucSEED Indovation and such established Gaming Angel Investors will help us in hiring the best talent and for accelerating our journey to create the biggest esports IP of India”.

Stareout games is a hyper casual game studio. Unlike other game studios, Stareout takes a regional content approach for giving a more immersive gaming experience for users. During the past 6 months,

Stareout was able to launch and attract over 100k organic users across their games.

Vamsi Raju, Founder and CEO at Stareout games said, “Hyper Casual gaming is a low commitment and quick stress relief alternative for long form entertainment. We are building gaming experiences that are tailored to the desi audience and are worth playing”. He further added that “The seed fund raised from SucSEED Indovation will help us prove the product market fit for regional based games which people can play in their local languages, targeting tier 2 and tier 3 cities primarily. We will be working on creating new and unique user acquisition strategies to get users in India at the lowest possible cost.”

Founded in 2019, Stareout Games is a gaming consultancy company catering to global publishers and game studios. Over the years with the experiences of building and scaling hyper casual games across various markets & considering the rapid growth in Indian markets, Stareout Games has pivoted the business model and started launching under our own banner.

Vikrant Varshney, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of SucSEED Indovation Fund, said “The global gaming market was valued at USD 173.70 billion in 2020, and it is expected to reach a value of USD 314.40 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 9.64% over 2021-2026. We believe that this relationship will increase our footprint & exposure in the gaming community by assisting and aiding these early stage startups in their growth and development, as the gaming sector has a high potential.”

Sridhar Muppidi, Founder of PurpleTalk and of YesGnome, one of the largest game development and publishing companies in India, who is one of the key stakeholders in the SucSEED Indovation Gaming Sub-Fund; said: "India, with its immense talent pool, can potentially grab a sizable chunk of the $100B global gaming industry. However, there aren't enough companies going after this opportunity, so some of us in the industry figured the best way to accelerate this is by investing at a pre-seed stage in a large number of gaming entrepreneurs. To achieve this, most of the top gaming enterprises and companies in India have come together to launch this Gaming fund with SucSEED."

SucSEED Indovation Fund is a SEBI-registered Cat-I AIF-VC Fund-Angel Fund that focuses on early-stage start-ups involved in addressing mass-market problems with the help of deep-tech breakthroughs. Their primary funding focus is on Seed to Growth and Pre-Series A-stage companies. The Fund's General partners have a combined expertise of more than 100 years in Technology, Venture Capital, and the startup ecosystem, and have invested in more than 70 companies already and have successful exits to their credit.

IMAGE Center of Entrepreneurship  is an initiative by Software Tech Parks of India (STPI) in conjunction with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Government Of Telangana. The IMAGE CoE Accelerator Program is a one-of-a-kind program that provides mentorship, office space, seed funding, and other incentives to entrepreneurs in the gaming, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and VFX industries. IMAGE CoE Accelerator Program is currently running its pilot cohorts and has started registrations for the next cohort.

Two documents of understandings were inked by the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Bhubaneswar on 23rd February 2022 during the two-day visit of Shri Arvind Kumar, Director General, STPI to Bhubaneswar.  Shri Kumar, a technocrat of repute in the fields of IT & Telecom took over as DG, STPI in December 2021 and this was his maiden official visit to STPI Bhubaneswar.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between STPI and the National Aluminium Company Limited. Shri Manas Panda, Director, STPI-Bhubaneswar and Shri Subrat Kar, GGM (R&D), NALCO signed the MoU on behalf of their respective organisations. The MoU envisages cooperation and support between both the organisations for nurturing startups and innovators under incubation in  Electropreneur Park Bhubaneswar, a Centre of Entrepreneurship (CoE) of STPI and those to be incubated in STPI’s upcoming CoE in Bhubaneswar specialising in Industry 4.0 and  emerging technologies like cybersecurity and advanced analytics. NALCO would extend mentoring by experienced industry professionals of the company, share O&M related problem statements, extend test-bed for testing of solutions developed, provide need-based funding and seed capital support to selected startups and help connect the solutions developed to the market.

The second understanding in the shape of a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was concluded between STPI and the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of Odisha. Shri Manas Panda, Director, STPI-Bhubaneswar and Smt. Puspasree Puhan, Deputy Director, DST signed the MoA. As per the provisions, STPI will be a valued partner of DST in promoting biotech startups through the Bio-Innovation Grant Scheme. Selected biotech startups will be provided with funding, mentoring, prototype development assistance, product launching and go to market guidance through this scheme.

On the occasion, DG, STPI spoke about the contribution of STPI towards the software and IT services exports from India and expressed satisfaction that STPI will have eight centres in Odisha, the highest in any state. Shri Manoj Mishra, Secretary, E&IT stated that the coming together of STPI and NALCO as well as STPI and DST through these understandings is a big boon to the startups, innovators and entrepreneurs working in ESDM, Industry 4.0 and Biotechnology domains. Shri Manasa Prasad Mishra, Director (P&T), NALCO highlighted how the startup community and the startup ecosystem would be benefitted from the coming together of organisations from different business domains and expertise. Shri Manas Panda, Director, STPI Bhubaneswar spoke about the upcoming Centre of Entrepreneurship on emerging technologies in Bhubaneswar.

The understandings were signed in the presence DG, STPI, Secretary, E&IT Department and Director (Project & Technical), NALCO. Many other senior officials of the three partnering organisations including Executive Director (P&T), NALCO and a good number of entrepreneurs from MSME and startups were present on the occasion

'WE HAVE ALREADY BUILT A ROBUST TECH STARTUP ECOSYSTEM'

The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) has taken several initiatives to foster a healthy startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country and give an impetus to the IT sector. The STPI's new Director General Arvind Kumar, is confident of facilitating startups to acquire more than100 patents in emerging technology domains by 2025. 

Excerpts of a conversation with Arjun Yadav of BW Businessworld:

Your current role as Director General, STPI is quite a big shift from the one you played at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India till recently, is it not?

The transition from an advisory role at TRAI to the apex position of a national-level organisation has been a great experience. For half of my professional life, I have been in a regulatory role and was associated with the telecom sector. So, with my new role at STPI, that shift from telecom to the IT sector is a big change. I will build a comprehensive strategy to put this organisation into the next orbital growth apropos the mandate of our ministry (MeitY).

Software services exports had risen in 2020-21 and ITES accounted for 34.7 per cent of these exports, which is among your core competencies. This comes at a time when exports of other services declined. What has been the STPI, contribution to this trend?

The STPI enables the industry to achieve growth levels. Historically, exports from STPI-registered units during ,1991- 92 had been just 17 crore and now after 30 years, it has grown nearly 29,195 times to 4,96,313 crore during , 2020-21. We have always endeavoured to enable industry leaders and companies to scale up their businesses and come out with innovative solutions. During the pandemic we re-laxed norms relating to physically getting any official approvals or licenses.

The pandemic disrupted industries across verticals, but the Indian IT industry has successfully weathered this despite massive challenges. To make this possible, STPI initiated a remote work culture for the Indian IT industry to deliver their projects to global clients in a seamless manner.

Do you see any specific challenges for the startup ecosystem in this post-pandemic phase?

I don't foresee any such challenges for the startups to prosper. India created nearly three unicorns every month in 2021. We have already built a robust tech startup ecosystem in the country through Centres of Entrepreneurship (CoEs) and Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS) by collaborating with central/state government, industry, academia, industry associations, and funding partners. Our collaborative platform is a first-of-its-kind paradigm that facilitates startups world-class incubation, cutting-edge labs, mentoring, funding, market connect, and I PR facilitation. We are planning to nurture 1900-plus startups and create 100 plus patents in various emerging technology domains by 2025.

The STPI, 62nd centre was recently inaugurated at Meerut. What sort of employment opportunities is being created for the youth and what is your assessment of their enthusiasm for entrepreneurship?

I can tell you that there is a lot of enthusiasm. Meerut, specifically, has a unique advantage. It is well connected now to the capital because of the expressway and the upcoming Rapid Rail Transit. Secondly, it has infrastructure which is more cost-effective than Delhi and a good number of engineering colleges in the vicinity, owing to which there is a lot of affinity for the IT industry. So, Meerut can be an important centre from STPI's perceptive. I'm confident that whatever incubation space we have created there will be fully occupied within a year. When that happens, I can assure you that STPI through Meerut and other centres in U.P. will be able to bring an IT revolution in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

If we talk about employment opportunities, STPI has implemented India BPO Promotion Scheme ( IBPS) and NEBPS schemes with great success. More than 47,000 youths have been employed in tier-2 and tier-3 cities of India, which demonstrates that with the right policy and focused efforts, the desired objectives can be achieved. Our pan India presence and especially 54 centres in tier-2 and tier-3 cities have played a pivotal role in facilitating world-class incubation facilities for young engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators, SMEs and startups to realise their entrepreneurial dream.

Another core competency of the STPI is in the promotion of emerging technologies. How can startups and MSMEs leverage these technologies?

There is no doubt that the future will be driven by technology. The Indian IT Industry is on a hot foot to compete with its global counter parts in delivering solutions and products to address contemporary challenges. We are almost on the cusp of an extreme technology revolution wherein smart players can gain a competitive edge over their laggard peers.

The adoption of these emerging technologies will bring a tectonic shift in the automation of services and product manufacturing. We provide seed funding to MSMEs to give them financial security and also mentorship to help them gain confidence to innovate and tackle the fear of failure. Time is opportune for startups and small companies to leverage and showcase their path-breaking products to the larger world and create enormous value for their organisation and the nation at large, and realise the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

The North Eastern states were neglected for years.Tell us about some of STPIs schemes for the region that will help in employment creation for the youth.

To drive tech-entrepreneurial movement in the Northeast we have launched eight COEs and Startup Innovation Zones (SIZs) in the capital cities of eight states under the OctaNE scheme. What's unique about these centres is that each centre caters to a distinct emerging technology. These centres include loT in Agriculture CoE/SIZ in Guwahati, Emerging Tech (AR/VR) CoE/SIZ in Imphal, Data Analytics and Al CoE/SIZ in Agartala, IT Applications in Graphics Design CoE/SIZ in Kohima, IT Application in Healthcare and AgriTech CoE/SIZ in Gangtok, GIS Applications (including Drone Technology) CoE/SIZ in Itanagar. etc. OctaNE plans to foster 367 startups in the next five years in the region.