T-Hub goes live

Face of innovation, enterprise & entrepreneurship: Tata

Hyderabad: The newly-carved state of Telangana made a giant stride towards its quest to become a global hub for startups when Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons, inaugurated T-Hub, the much-awaited incubation facility of national scale on the IIIT-Hyderabad campus in the city on Thursday.

"Walking around the T-Hub building this afternoon, I couldn't help but believe that I am looking at one of the new faces of India. It is the face of entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise,” Ratan Tata said after inauguration of the T-Hub. E S L Narsimhan, Governor for Telangana and AP and Telangana IT Minister K T Rama Rao were also present.

Pointing out that entrepreneurship and enterprise were not new to India, he said the country produced entrepreneurs in traditional sectors. “But world did not recognise India as an enterprising country because we have not excelled as entrepreneurs in the new technologies. This is so because we did not have right environment,” he explained.

With facilities like the T-Hub and presence of venture capital firms, the country will see new wave of entrepreneurship in the new technologies, he added.

A collaborative effort of Telangana Government, IIT-Hyderabad, ISB and Nalsar; the T-Hub is designed and developed to provide essential window of growth opportunity for startups and early stage ventures by offering world-class infrastructure at a nominal cost and also helping some of them in getting funds.

The first phase facility named Catalyst that has come up at the IIIT-H campus is a five-storey building that offers a total workspace of 70,000 sq ft. The Telangana Government, which invested Rs 40 crore in the Phase I, is drawing up plans for second phase under which it will build a much bigger facility in a couple of years.

Nasscom chairman BVR Mohan Reddy said the T-Hub would not only create an innovation cluster, but also establish a high-density startup ecosystem. “The world-class building we opened today can accommodate 300 startups and create employment for 800 people,” Reddy added.

Later speaking to the media, Rata Tata observed that healthcare-related developments would be the next big wave in the startup space in coming years. "I believe that medical breakthroughs, especially powered by technologies like analytics, will be the next big thing for startups. I see a great deal of breakthroughs in the areas such as lifesciences and stem cells, which could cure diseases that hitherto were fatal or had no cure,” he maintained.

Asked whether car models like Tata Nano would be relevant in the Indian context, he said there was place for such models in the country. "Our idea was to give an Indian family of a two-wheeler, an all-weather four-wheeler transport,” he said, adding that Tata Nano would definitely find place in the garages of Indian customers.

Ratan Tata refused to make any comment on the ongoing debate on intolerance, but said India had been a country of communal harmony for centuries and it would remain so in future.