Hyderabad: The T-Hub Reactor building has hit headlines even before its official launch as the fate of the existing T-Hub Catalyst building is yet to be decided. The Telangana government’s start-up initiative T-Hub is a unique partnership between the government and three academic institutions — IIIT-Hyderabad, ISB and Nalsar.
The Reactor building, coming up at Hyderabad Knowledge City, is four times bigger than the current Catalyst building and is spread over 3.5 lakh sq ft.
According to T-Hub CEO Jay Krishnan, “The construction of the Reactor building is going on at brisk pace. We may possibly even start using it by September. We will move out of the existing building once the new infrastructure is ready. The existing infrastructure will be managed and run by IIIT-Hyderabad.”
IIIT has its own incubation centre for entrepreneurs in the old building. The new larger building will benefit the IIIT start-up ecosystem even more. “While the occupants will shift entirely to the T-Hub Reactor, the original idea was to shift only when the campus was ready. However, now the occupants will shift phase-wise instead of in one go,” said Mr Krishnan.
The Reactor building at Hyderabad Knowledge City in Raidurgam will be the second largest incubator in the world and will become the new symbol of start-up ecosystems in Hyderabad. It will be able to provide a seating for 4,000 people while the Catalyst accommodates over 900 persons. The Reactor building will have laboratories, experience centres, auditoriums etc. About 3,000 start-ups have already applied to work out of T-Hub, Mr Krishnan said.
T-Hub Reactor will not limit its scope to start-ups and corporates, but will also house accelerators, incubators, venture capitalists from outside. T-Hub COO Srinivas Kollipara said, “We are talking to representatives in different countries to put up their start-up desks in T-Hub Reactor. We want to encourage corporate companies to set up their innovation labs with us.”
