The Telangana state government is planning to start a hub for the new healthcare start ups on the lines of ‘T-Hub’, an Information Technology (IT) incubation centre which was started earlier to encourage the young entrepreneurs in the IT and software technology profession.
Encouraged by the humongous response the T-Hub has received from the entrepreneurs, the state government wants to expand the same initiative to the enthusiastic entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector and wants to create an ecosystem by launching an accelerator for healthcare startups.
According to sources from the healthcare department, the new startup incubator will be a public private partnership (PPP) project, where in global pharma giants will be roped in along with support from the government to fast track the T-Hub Health innovator centre for the new startups.
“T-Hub has already been gaining enormous support from the new startups and enthusiastic innovator groups. On similar lines the state government also wants to begin T-Hub Health, an incubation centre for the healthcare entrepreneurs. Initially leading pharma and software companies like Merck and Microsoft Ventures have been roped to accelerate the innovative hub for healthcare startups,” informed Jay Krishnan, CEO of T-Hub.
Krishnan further explains, the accelerator will comprise a structured and study execution plan, a growth plan based on experimentation as well as metrics and a well prioritised product plan. The startups operating from the accelerator will further receive mentorship from domain experts and will be connected to a platform to receive investment from institutional ventures.
Interestingly, the healthcare accelerator is the first of four such initiatives to be rolled out by the T-Hub over the next one year. The other three, also of 90-day duration will mentor startups in the areas of business-to-business (B2B) solutions, agri-tech and fast growing internet of things (IoT).
Established in 2015, the T-Hub provides a wonderful space spreading across more than 70,000 square feet at IIIT campus in Gachibowli. As part of its second phase initiatives, the Telangana state government is setting up a much bigger facility for the T-Hub. “Till date we have received more than 16000 applications for incubation space at Catalysts. Around 15 of these are working in life sciences and bio technology spaces will be chosen for the accelerator programme,” said the CEO.