T-Hub Could Be Starting Point of New Wave, Says Ratan Tata

Hyderabad, Nov 5 (IANS) Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata on Thursday inaugurated the T-Hub, claimed to be India's largest technology incubator, describing it one of the new faces of India and nucleus of what could be new big things in the country.

Lauding the facility built by Telangana government in partnership with three leading institutions, the eminent industrialist said that this is the first look at new India of tomorrow not only in e-commerce, e-retailing but in exciting areas of medical remedies, medical treatment, stem cells and life science.

"This can be the starting point of that new wave," he said while stressing the need to support the enterprising young Indian engineers and scientists to unleash the Indian tiger.

"My enthusiasm in new India of tomorrow continues to be there. I continue to feel the need to support enterprising young Indian engineers and scientists," he said.

Tata said though entrepreneurship and sense of enterprises not new India, the country has not been recognized all over the world as an enterprising country.

"We have been entrepreneurs be it in agriculture, traditional industries and yet we have not been recognized all over the world as an enterprising country. What we have not done is registered ourselves as an entrepreneurial nation in the new technologies of the world.

"Technologies that don't require billions of dollars to establish that don't require hundreds of acres to build enterprises that are built on innovation that is in your mind non-traditional untried and sometimes risky but that make big difference in the world of tomorrow," he said.

Tata pointed that this is what elevated the US in 1980s into new world of technology and hi-tech.

"It changed the way we live, changed what we are holding in our hands in terms of phones communication yet India has been only a part of it through people who left India and gone elsewhere because environment here did not support them," he said.

Tata said he grew up in an environment where if someone had an idea, his boss or manager would have told him to gain some experience before opening his mouth.

"Enterprise today is the ability of someone who may be in his 20s, who has a good idea and who needs to find the way to implement it. We now have an environment of venture capital that listens to that person and we have a facility like this to enable that person to try out his idea to bring out into reality or fruition in a manner that is interdisciplinary, open and unifying," he added.

Tata, who went around the facility, also interacted with the young entrepreneurs who have been allocated space for their startups. "Make the difference," he told entrepreneurs when they wanted to know what he would advise them.

Telangana Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan said the organization should provide an opportunity to engineering students from various colleges to try their ideas.

He said the organization should not merely confine itself to information technology but focus on the finding solution to the problems faced by people, especially those living in rural areas.

Telangana's Information Technology Minister K. Tarakarama Rao said the facility would provide world-class environment to the young minds from across the country. He said T-Hub was already out of space.

The government has built the facility with 70,000 square feet space at a cost of Rs.40 crore at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

It has been developed in collaboration with IIIT, Hyderabad, Indian School of Business (ISB) and NALSAR University of Law.

While ISB will be the business mentor, technology mentorship will be provided by IIIT and legal and intellectual property mentorship by NALSAR.