Telengana mulls to set up incubator for startups in defence

The Telangana Government is mulling to set up an exclusive incubator for startups working in the defence sector, said state IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday.

"We have a series of discussions with the Scientific Advisor to Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) and with the support of Centre we will be launching a Defence Electronics and Defence focused incubator in Hyderabad," Rama Rao said in his inaugural address of "Deftronics-2017", a two-day conclave of defence and aerospace electronics industry.

"I think it would be an important initiative and a step forward in ensuring the completely leverage our indigenous capabilities of our youngsters who wanted to come out with more and more success stories out of India," the Minister added.

He also said under the state's "Innovation Policy", the government is planning to develop a million square feet work space to accommodate startups across different sectors.

"Possibly we are going to launch the worlds' largest incubator by next year. This would be a 3.5 lakh square feet area facility accommodating 1,000 startups all at one roof," he added.

He said the capital Hyderabad is shaping up as a hub for aerospace and defence manufacturing and there are a number of MSMEs working in these sectors.

"We are as a state eyeing almost 7.5 million of electronic products (manufacturing) by 2020. This is an ambitious target in the next three years. I do believe that we are well poised. We also hope to attract almost USD 3 billion investments in the electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM) space by 2020," added KTR.

Earlier during the inaugural session, Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister G Satheesh Reddy said 80 per cent of the components being used in Akash Missile is manufactured by private companies.

A representative of India Electronics and Semiconductor Association said that the defence electronics trade is expected to touch USD 80 billion from the current levels of USD 20 billion.