THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even as the state has developed an ecosystem for startups, no globally competitive startup has come up here owing to lack of talented people, says Sanjay Vijayakumar, one of the young entrepreneurs of an IT startup from the state. "Though we have a large number of engineering graduates and a good number of IT startups, so far we could not make a global breakthrough by bringing out any out-of-the-box products. This is due to the lack of talented people," Mr. Vijayakumar, who was former chairman of Kochi Startup Village, told reporters here on Thursday.
To address this issue, the Startup Village Collective (SV.CO), a digital incubator headed by Mr. Vijayakumar, has initiated a Product School in association with Technoaprk-based startup firm Carestack. The plan is to train 50 to 100 engineering graduates and even students in skills and knowledge to build software products. The six-month programme will be conducted in association with major players in the industry. The course fee will be around Rs. 1 lakh. Scholarships of 80 to 100 percent would be offered with support of some leading firms. Jobs would be offered in startups with attractive remuneration for those successfully completing the training, he said.
Admissions to the Product School are already open on www.sv.oc and the selection would be made on the basis of a coding challenge to build a website to display crypto currency prices. Mr Shilendra Soman, an alumnus of College of Engineering, Trivandum, who will be leading the Product School campaign, and Carestack head of operations Arjun Satheesh were also present at the press
conference.
