World’s First Digital Student Incubator to Reach 5 Million Students in 3500 Engineering Colleges

Startup village (SV) was set up in Kerala with a vision to guide future entrepreneurs of the country. Launched in 2012, this one of a kind initiative started off with an initial mandate of supporting 48 startups in five years. To everyone’s surprise, its achievements  exceeded expectations. It incubated more than 70 physical and 500 virtual startups in just three years. Its students performed very well, receiving offers from some of India’s best startups after graduating. Soon, its PPP (Private-Public Partnership) programme caught the eye of other states as well, leading to a second centre being set up in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. These past three years saw SV operating solely from a brick and mortar model, thereby limiting its reach.

But now, SV has come up with a digital student incubator - SV.CO - the first of its kind in the world.

Photo source: Facebook Through SV.CO, Startup Village has the capacity to reach out to five million students across 3500 engineering colleges in the country. SV.CO provides a wide variety of digital facilities, ranging from applications for admission to teaching and mentoring.

Moreover, keeping in line with the PM’s Startup India vision, SV provides one month of free training to students. All of SV.CO’s batches are theme based.

Unveling SV.CO at a function on Wednesday, Kerala Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said:

"The state will fund 1,000 startups every year with Rs. 2 lakh for converting ideas to prototypes. The best prototypes will be given Rs. 1 crore interest free loan to convert the prototype into a successful startup."

If you’re a college student with a dream of making it big as an entrepreneur, make sure you pay their official website a visit!

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