MeitY, Nasscom to jointly set up Internet of Things facility in city

Centres of Excellence to come up in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Ahmedabad

Vizag would emerge as a startup hub due to its robust industrial base, feels National e-Governance Division CEO M.S. Rao.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will set up a Centre of Excellence in Internet of Things in Visakhapatnam in association with Nasscom.

“Nasscom is in the process of establishing CoEs for industries in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Ahmedabad besides Vizag. All these centres would promote the use of artificial intelligence by the industries,” MeitY’s National e-Governance Division CEO and president M.S. Rao told The Hindu .

Industries would be encouraged for use of chat-bots, robots, power plants, data analytics and automation in the domains of automobiles, mineral-based plants, health, and finance (loan distribution), he said.

Mr. Rao expressed confidence over the emergence of Visakhapatnam as a leading startup hub because of a robust industrial base.

Under the National Policy on Software Products unveiled during the current year, Visakhapatnam is expected to get a lot of benefits. The policy under National Software Products Mission will nurture 10,000 technology startups including 1,000 in tier-II and tier-III towns, to create a talent pool for the software products industry by upskilling one million IT professionals, motivating one lakh school and college students and specialise 10,000 professionals who can provide leadership.

The policy envisages creation of a dedicated software product development fund with a corpus of ₹1,000 crore and launching of a scheme to create a corpus of ₹5,000 crore with an end target to have at least 100 Indian software product companies with a valuation of ₹500 crore. The policy also proposes to extend research and innovation support to institutes of higher learning by allotting ₹500 crore.

Full support

On takeaways for statups, Mr. Rao said they were offering unified portals for information related to startups and incubators, funding support to startups available at seed, early venture and even at mature stage, support to startups through CoEs for mentor, equipment, co-working space and investors, IPR support to startups through CoE on IPR and showcase section to display their unique products or services. According to Nasscom Strategic Review-2017, the national policy on software products-2019, global software product industry is estimated at USD 413 billion and contribution of software products in Indian IT-ITES revenue is USD 7.1 billion.