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.
“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.
