The Pune Smart City Development Corporation (PSCDC) has set up a new subsidiary, Pune Idea Factory Foundation (PIFF), which will serve as a one-stop shop for anything startup related in the city.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that he would like to make the city India’s number one destination for startups by 2020 and this initiative is a big step towards that.
Kunal Kumar, Municipal Commissioner, Pune Municipal Corporation, told that they had studied startup models in eight cities over the past few months Berlin, Tel Aviv, Paris, Chicago, Amsterdam, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kochi before coming up with this.
“The foundation of Pune as a Smart City is built on three verticals improving the quality of life by improving infrastructure and services, boosting the economy and creating jobs and sustainability. Under all these heads, there will be a need for enterprises to create and support and maintain services. We want startups to take up that challenge. This then becomes an engine for growth and innovation keeps happening,“ he said.
For instance if the city is undertaking a solar power project, certain aspects like repair and maintenance would have to be supported locally. He clarified that the PIFF, or Pune Now, as the brand will be known, would be more of an aggregator rather than an incubator.
It will brand and promote Pune as a startup hub through events and conferences, and create the ecosystem needed to support it. “We will bring together other incubators in the city, investors and mentors who can help and guide the startups. We currently have a fourmember advisory board, which will be expanded to between seven to 12 people over the next few months.“
The current advisory board members are NCL’s Dr Raghunath Mashelkar, Bajaj Auto’s Rajiv Bajaj, Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, 5F World and K Ganesh,Co-Founder, GrowthStory. The PIFF board comprises Kumar and Nitin Kareer, chairman, of PSCDC.
The city has a large number of startups in the fintech, healthtech and edtech space, and a sizeable number of manufacturing and IT companies.
Source: ET Tech
