With its successful seed capital scheme the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board has kicked many snoozy incubators to vibrant life. Find out how this is spurring enterprise
What was the objective of constituting The National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board?
It was founded in 1982 with the idea of promoting technology-oriented knowledge-based enterprises for science and technology graduates.
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| H K Mittal Adviser, Member Secretary, National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), Secretary, Technology Development Board (TDB) |
Back then we were still a closed economy and the ecosystem for high-tech ventures was not all that exciting. So, the board was born a little ahead of its time.
So do you think it has met its primary objective? How about its growth path?
Initially we struggled. People wanted to get inside the protected environment of incubators and Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Parks just to avoid the inspector raj.
We promoted 16 Science & Technology Entrepreneurs Parks (STEP). Over a period of 15 years, six of the 16 parks did very well. As for the rest, six proved to be average performers and the other four were flops. The parks were doing everything other than promoting entrepreneurship like running MBA programmes and computer classes to keep themselves alive.
What led to the expansion of incubators and parks?
The new decade dawned with the liberalization of the economy and by then we too had gained substantial knowledge about promoting incubators and parks. In 2000, coinciding with the dotcom boom, we started with our incubator program. Today we have 60+ incubators and STEPS located in institutions of excellence, almost all old IITs, some of the IIMs, National Institutes of Technology, some private engineering colleges and few research labs like NCL, Pune.
How did the concept of infrastructure parks evolve?
Infrastructure parks made an entry after we noticed that young engineers who were working with big names like TCS, and Wipro wanted more than a secure career. They had several creative ideas but no outlet. So, we thought of starting incubators
for them.
We have supported two of them, Technopark in Trivandrum and the ICICI Knowledge Park in Hyderabad. The former is incubating 20 start-ups and has turned out to be one of our most successful projects. They have good networking with the local support system and surprisingly today, Kerala is leading in terms of innovators.
To spur entrepreneurship, NSTEDB took the unprecedented step of providing seed capital to startups. Tell us about it.
Until sometime back all entrepreneurs were dependent on external finance even for the initial amount of Rs5 to 10 lakhs. To change this we started a seed support system in 2004 under which we placed about a crore of rupees with incubators as a grant from NSTEDB. The incubators were thereby empowered to disperse the money as an investment, by way of soft loans, term loans and equity participation. etc.
Are you happy with the results? Do you think that you have been able to strike a balance between giving opportunities and ensuring that the support is sustainable?
The results are encouraging. The foothold in the incubator has increased. Earlier, despite providing a platform and all the requisite guidance, we failed to get any traction as startups wanted tangible benefits. But with the seed fund schemes in place, we have witnessed increase in enrollment.
The increased participation in fact encouraged us to raise the grant amount with the incubators. And we followed up the existing scheme with lot of schemes worth `2 crores. So, now most of the incubators have a kitty of `3 crores of rupees and the limit is Rs50 lakhs.
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