Last month, Chief Minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik inaugurated O-Hub in the Special Economic Zone at Patia, Bhubaneswar covering a 1.5 lakh sqft area. With state-of-the-art facilities and plug-n-play infrastructure, the CM was confident to share that his hope that the state will touch 5,000 start-ups by 2025. As many as 50 start-ups have been onboarded and two floors of the very classy looking building are ready for use. In the next three to four months, the other two floors will be ready as well.
"The advantage that O-Hub offers is that it is a completely state-driven incubator and is looking for the holistic development of the ecosystem. More than that, we are hoping that start-ups are able to showcase all their innovation to government departments, work closely on their problems to devise solutions and establish a connection between government and start-ups. Also, O-Hub will be a mother incubator to existing incubators in the state," shares Sanjukta Badhai, part of team Startup Odisha and start-up evangelist.
Their very first programme is the yearly Rs 100 crore fund upfront where venture capitalists (VCs) and angel investors will be invited to invest in Odisha-based start-ups while the state will invest Rs 100 crore from its side too. "Soon, we are hoping to onboard knowledge partners who will see start-ups in all the three stages — pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration, with a maximum incubation period of 1.5 years," shares Badhai. They are also hoping to onboard global accelerator partners for those start-ups that need soft-landing support or cross-border learning.
The Startup Odisha team hopes to take the spirit of entrepreneurship to the school level as well and hoping to come with design thinking challenges, innovation workshops, entrepreneurship drives and a whole lot more in collaboration with the Department of School and Mass Education and other departments.
