Kanwal Rekhi commits Rs 20 crore to Kakatiya Sandbox

It will be a part of K-hub, a social innovation hub run by Kakatiya Sandbox in Nizamabad.

Hyderabad: Kanwal Rekhi, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Co-Founder of The Indus Entrepreneurs, committed Rs 20 crore to seed the Kanwal Rekhi Rural Entrepreneurship and Startup Center (KREST). It will be a part of K-hub, a social innovation hub run by Kakatiya Sandbox in Nizamabad.

KREST will have an incubation centre, makers’ lab, hardware prototyping, micro-entrepreneurship centre, co-Working space, and convention facilities. It will offer networking support, mentoring by industry experts, access to angel investors and venture capitalists,
and intellectual property management among others.

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“Indians have raised the bar in the US and built great prosperity through Entrepreneurship. We want a similar movement in India to create an ecosystem which supports 10 million entrepreneurs when India turns 100 years in 2047. Furthermore, I believe that India has the
potential to become the breadbasket of the world. To achieve that goal, it needs an entrepreneur-driven infusion of technology and techniques in this sector. Hopefully, Kakatiya Sandbox will validate this idea and provide a role model for others,” said Kanwal in a release.

“KREST will support entrepreneurs solving problems in agriculture, healthcare, education and rural livelihood. Kanwal’s contribution has the potential to be transformative. I believe KREST can become a model for other parts of rural and semi-urban India,” said Kakatiya Sandbox
Co-Founder Raju Reddy.

Kanwal’s donation will energise Kakatiya Sandbox to scale its programmes across agriculture, skilling, startups, and micro-entrepreneurship. With philanthropic intervention, use of
technology, and mentorship, it hopes to catalyse the North Telangana region as an engine of economic growth and prosperity, he said.