Our Iot Open Lab In Bengaluru Is Funded By Arrow Electronics

The growing presence of startup incubation centres, electronics testing facilities and open labs can turn the tide for the Indian ESDM ecosystem. In an exclusive chat with Rahul Chopra and Baishakhi Dutta of the EFY Group, Dr Omkar Rai, director general, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), sheds light on the various startup-centric facilities that entrepreneurs in the country can use. Excerpts follow...

EB: STPI initially focused on encouraging IT in the country, and now it is increasing the scope of its operations to cover ESDM. What is the vision behind this?

STPI started with the promotion of the IT outsourcing industry. At present, this is a very mature industry which is powering and serving many IT businesses across the world. The focus is now shifting to ESDM primarily for two reasons.

First, India needs to promote electronics manufacturing because our import bill has grown a lot. And in the times to come, it can grow even further if we don’t manufacture in India.

The second reason for a shift in focus is that much of the wealth now lies in technology product creation—the world market in terms of technology products is worth US$ 445 billion. India’s share of that is a mere US$ 7.1 billion. The aim of this whole incubation and startup movement as well as the National Policy on Software Products (that has recently been approved by the Union Cabinet) is to transform India into a technology product nation. India is trying to capture a sizeable share of the world market –we are targeting US$ 70-80 billion by 2025.

EB: How will this transition benefit the ESDM startup pool in India?

Since the nature of entrepreneurship is changing, the nature of startups is changing too. Hence, we are transforming our role to become a modern incubator which should be able to provide end-to-end services to startups. These services will be for product creation—right from the screening process, manpower training, making other capital investments in the statrtups, and exposing them to the whole market.

Then come more facilities like market connects and access to capital. So all these essential services that are required for today’s startups are now being provided by STPI, for which we are creating several Centres of Excellence (CoEs) across the country.