Vizag CoE Paves Way For Job Creation, Fund Raising

With Andhra Pradesh Innovation Society, as a key partner, we are strengthening this ecosystem in the region, enabling startups to scale and drive impactful innovation. Our mission is to empower innovators – Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO, MeitY-Nasscom CoE, tells Bizz Buzz

Visakhapatnam: The Centre of Excellence (CoE) for IoT and AI established here at Andhra University in 2021 under Digital India programme, has provided jobs in startups incubated by it, and also helped raise a funding of nearly Rs135 crore as part of promoting innovation and scalability.

The CoE, a brainchild of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and apex industry body for Indian IT and BPM sector Nasscom, is running successfully with the support of Andhra Pradesh Innovation Society (APIS). The venture capitalists and angel investors have funded in the range of Rs3 crore to Rs60 crore. The highest amount of Rs60 crore has been sanctioned to Aqua Exchanges, which has developed aquaculture devices. Besides providing internships to many including IIM and NIT students, the startups being incubated at the CoE have provided a job opportunity to nearly 750.

The CoE is now home to 60 plus startups, of which 30 have graduated. Technology and innovation solutions have remained its hallmarks since its inception. Some of the startups work for Fortune-500 companies dreaming to become global companies in future. Some offer track and trace solutions, while others want offshore using AR and VR to serve ships and oil rigs. Real-time monitoring has turned into a mainstay of the budding entrepreneurs. The CoE is hand-holding startups in developing deeptech products and services.

The CoE is one among four established by Nasscom, the others being located in Bengaluru, Gandhinagar and Gurugram (Haryana). Vizag was chosen because of its strategic location and robust industrial ecosystem. The CoEs aim to bridge the gap between the industries and deeptech startups by fostering cutting-edge digital solutions.“We are building a dynamic ecosystem of innovation, co-creation and deeptech excellence. By bringing together startups, enterprises and academia, we are fostering breakthrough solutions that drive AI and emerging technology across the industries,” said Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO, MeitY-Nasscom CoE, told Bizz Buzz.

He said “with Andhra Pradesh Innovation Society, as a key partner, we are strengthening this ecosystem in the region, enabling startups to scale and drive impactful innovation. Our mission is to empower innovators, accelerate digital transformation and position India as a global hub for deeptech innovation.”

The startups have achieved a revenue of Rs30 crore. The CoE has also supported the startups to get over 13 IPs for their products.

Maddala Srinivas, founder of Sweya Information Technology, said that they are working at CoE for the past three years and using AI and IoT, they are providing hospital asset tracking for content/inventory management and other domains. Being a bootstrapped startup, they started it by pooling up Rs15 lakh and today they can boast of recording a revenue of Rs4 crore.

M Durga Prasad, Founder CEO of Bigadatamatica Solutions Pvt Ltd, which is also present at CoE, said: “We are planning to go global after developing products. Being a bootstrapped startup, now our revenue is in the range of Rs20 lakh to Rs30 lakh. We are confident of scaling up and making it a global company due to our specialisation in Generative AI, enterprise AI search, conversational AI and quantum AI computing”.