Telangana home to world’s largest innovation campus

Hyderabad: The Telangana government has unveiled the world’s largest innovation campus T-Hub with a total built-up area of 5,82,689 sq ft, the second largest being Station F which is based in France. The T-Hub’s Innovation Campus will empower the startup ecosystem and support entrepreneurs by providing them with access to 6Ms – Mentors, Market, Motivation, […]

Hyderabad: The Telangana government has unveiled the world’s largest innovation campus T-Hub with a total built-up area of 5,82,689 sq ft, the second largest being Station F which is based in France. The T-Hub’s Innovation Campus will empower the startup ecosystem and support entrepreneurs by providing them with access to 6Ms – Mentors, Market, Motivation, Manpower, Money, Methodologies and 2Ps – Partnership and Policy advisory.

The inauguration of the campus was no less than festival with startups, entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, mentors, and government representatives, present. The event focused on the theme of ‘Trailblazing Telangana’ with sessions such as T-Hub Talks, Fireside Chats, Masterclass, Panel Discussions, etc. The event began with a keynote speech from the actor turned investor and entrepreneur Rana Daggubati.

T-Hub CEO Mahankali Srinivas Rao said, “the innovation campus will bring together all the startup ecosystem stakeholders to create sustainable businesses with a special focus on verticals like EV/ Mobility, Healthtech, Enterprise tech, Gaming and Artificial Intelligence. We aim to support over 2,000 startups.” The new phase will focus on internationalisation and capacity building with new foreign partnerships with Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

Built in a T-shaped structure, the building is spread across a total built-up area of 5,82,689 sq. ft and 10 floors. On the sixth floor, 18,000 sqft is allocated to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and AIC T-Hub Foundation, an association formed at T-Hub, in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog. The seventh floor is assigned to the Department of Science and Technology’s (DST) Centre of Excellence to promote AI and ML. The eighth and ninth floors are proposed for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) project, along with social impact startups and young entrepreneurs (Y-Hub).

Fail beautifully, Swiggy co-founder to aspiring entrepreneurs

For aspiring entrepreneurs worried about failing in their startup journey, Swiggy co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety has a simple suggestion – fail beautifully and try to learn from it.

Delivering a talk on ‘Building a Decacorn’ at the T-Hub Innovation Summit on Tuesday, Sriharsha spoke about the food delivery app’s connection with Hyderabad and said that it was the first city he and Nandan Reddy, co-founder of Swiggy, came to set up their business before moving to Bengaluru.

Describing their journey of building a successful company, Sriharsha says he and Reddy initially founded a logistics company known as Bundle which failed miserably. He says that this experience helped them understand that there was not much focus on customer service in the country. After multiple other experiments and learning experiences, Swiggy was founded in 2014.
Speaking about the role failures play, he said, “There will be failures in an entrepreneur’s journey. The key is to have an inventing mindset and a positive relationship with failure. Fail beautifully and try to learn from that.”

Answering a question on how to manage a team in those failures, he says the best way is to acknowledge and communicate, adding that having practices in a company that appreciates and does not penalise the right kind of failures is vital.