In the last 100 days, 10 new cities have joined the Startup ecosystem. Three new incubator hosts have come on board. 10,000 youngsters – mostly in college – and set to do startups – have participated in brick and mortar events.
Zero govt subsidy. Zero govt control.
100% academic institution support
100% established industry support
100% government support
100% private capital.
Let me round up last ten days – Bhagalpur in Bihar, Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Amritsar in Punjab. Three states breaking into a startup ecosystem which is yet to reach them. And catching up overnight.
Let me describe Deeptech startups with real technologies. On the ground. Starting with Bihar.
A digital Parikrama at the Bihar Museum. And Teleportation.
Some exhibits at the intersection of technology and tradition are interesting. One such is the digital Parikrama set up as a collaboration between Switzerland, IIT Jodhpur and the Bihar Museum. In Patna.
What the turntable lets you do is to face a potrait display and rotate a turntable with you. As you go around, you are basically doing a Parikrama of the statue and the display will let you see the statue from all sides. It is a great way to see a 3D artefact on a 2D screen. Except that most visitors don’t get the concept till it is explained.
So we got startup teams in the three startup circuits which are soon going live – the Bodhi Startup Circuit (starts at Prayagraj on the Amritsar Kolkata expressway and goes along the Ganges to Bhagalpur and ends at the Nepal Border), the Jodhpur Dessert Trail (starts at the Delhi Mumbai expressway and goes from Jaipur towards Jodhpur ending at the Pakistan border) and the Path of Wisdom circuit (which starts at Chandigarh and goes to Kashmir via Amritsar, Mcleodganj and Vaishnodevi).
The first cross circuit project kicked off yesterday – with three local incubation hosts – FT Morris in Jodhpur, Igzy Incubate in Amritsar and Cyber IIT in Bhagalpur. All three non-state capitals. But making their move to retrieve their rightful place in the emerging startup economy.
The project is to create virtual reality at unprecedented scale. For Televisitation. A real simulation that lets a user talking a walk in Gandhi Maidan, Patna to experience the Golden Temple as if by teleportation. Or to let a tourist in Amritsar visit the Bihar Museum. Or to let a visitor to Nalanda walk through the Qutab minar complex.
And to do it with Indian technologies. Cyber proof. The Indian government has banned devices with a backdoor like imported smartphones and cctv cameras. The start point is an Indian operating system. A truly Indian pan tilt zoom camera. A encryption system that is hacker proof. Server virtualisation that collapses the cost of ai data centres. Distributed machine intelligence. Neuromorphic systems.
Deeptech at its very best.
For the common man.
Shaping a reality.
That eliminates travel.
The greenest way to travel is not to travel. But to benefit from the virtues of travel.