‘Right Policies Fuel Ecosystem for Innovation’ – Sanjay Vijayakumar

TechnoparkToday.com>> July 24, 2013:  Kerala with its rich human capital is a capable contender of the technological revolution, and right policies will help create an ecosystem that fosters innovation-led growth, Mr Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman of Startup Village, India’s first telecom technology incubator, has said.

“Over the Internet, it is now possible for a student here to acquire world-class learning from institutions such as Stanford, MIT or Harvard; a facilitating policy is required to make this happen,” he said.
Mr Vijayakumar was delivering a talk on “An Ecosystem for Innovation” in the final technical session of TRIMA 2013 – the Annual Management Convention of Trivandrum Management Association that concluded here on July 23.

Elaborating the significance of right polices in building an ecosystem, he said that domestic automobile industry grew because of policy measures including import duty. “The component of import duty adds to the cost of foreign automobiles thus creating an avenue for Indian companies to produce competitive cars.”

India’s billion-dollar IT companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant were instrumental in creating the IT services ecosystem in the 80s, and the time is now ideal to create an IT products and innovation ecosystem that will build world-class billion dollar IT startups from India.

“Internet has enhanced our benchmarking standards. Our product startups have to compete with startups in the Silicon Valley, where the ecosystem is 40 years ahead of us. In India, still there are many without access to Internet,” Mr Vijayakumar explained.

The world moves through revolutions and social media is proving to be an effective agent in facilitating these revolutions. Citing the examples of Turkey, Brazil and Egypt, he said social media enabled these youth-centric revolutions.