'Electropreneur Park' - a joint initiative by STPI and IESA to promote electronics startups

Software Technology Parks Of India (STPI) has partnered India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) to set up an 'Electropreneur Park', aimed at supporting 50 startups working on electronics product designing and development over the next five years.

The initiative, which has a corpus of Rs 22 crore, will focus on IP creation and product development to increase value addition to domestic manufacturing of electronic items like smartphones, smart meters, micro ATMs and set top boxes.

"Under the programme, we will select the best 10 early stage entrepreneurs in ESDM across the country, based on the merit of the project submission and will support them in R&D to accelerate electronics innovation," STPI Director General Omkar Rai told PTI. The initiative is a subset of the government's 'Make in India' mission, aligned with entrepreneurial and innovation focus, he added.

"The initiative will identify the 10 most promising ideas/startups in the ESDM space every year and incubate them, with the required nurturing and help them to secure IP for their innovation," Former Chairman of IESA and Member (Project Management Group) at Electropreneur Park Ashok Chandak said.

This will also bring a start-up revolution in the ESDM space for the first time, with major contributions towards design and component ecosystem, which will strengthen India's pitch in the electronics manufacturing space, he added.

According to PTI, selected entrepreneurs will be offered laboratories as per international standard, ESDM mentorship by industry veterans and academicians as well as facilities like tax, legal, finance, accounting and patent search.

The Park will also facilitate seed funding for the ventures. The demand for electronics hardware in the country is projected to increase from USD 45 billion in 2009 to USD 400 billion by 2020.

"The growing convergence of information, communication, and entertainment has given a new impetus to demand for electronics hardware. The industry is estimated to create over 27.8 million new jobs and drive USD 15 billion investment to this sector over the next decade," Chandak said.

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