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The Minister for Science & Technology and Ocean Develoopment, Shri. Kapil Sibal has called for scaling up the number of business incubators in the country for the development of high technology driven and knowledge based enterprises. Inaugurating the Global Forum on Business Incubation in New Delhi today, he said that the spectrum of services offered in an incubator are extremely varied, ranging from strategic business planning, to administrative services, to guidance on issues of intellectual property.
Making a futuristic projection, Shri Sibal said that in the next 15 to 20 years, about 400 million Indians will be joining the work force and most of them will be young people. The estimated annual number of engineering graduates is around .38 million at present and it will be rising significantly. Viewed from this angle the environment and support system needs to gear up for faster commercialization of R&D outputs. In the majority of cases the R&D outputs do not get comercialised for want of initial investment, enabling environment and networking. The answer to all these problems would be business incubators, he said.
Referring to the role of the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board of the Department of Science and Technology, he said, it has played a pioneering role in the Indian business incubation arena since year 2000. So far, 15 technology business incubators have been set up at various institutions. In addition, there are 17 Science and Technology entrepreneur’s park and 50 other such mechanism promoted by various agencies including the State Governments, Shri Sibal said.
Speaking on the occasion, the Director of Global Information and Communication Technologies Department, World Bank Group, Mr. Mohsen Khalil said that the advent of information technology has shown that there is no limit to human potential if the entrepreneurs are given the appropriate opportunity. He said that innovation is now taking place at a rapid pace in developing countries of which India is a bright example. There has been a reverse flow of goods and services and it has been due to innovation in technology. Business incubators not only help in learning from successes but also from failures.
The Global Forum and Business Incubation has been jointly organized by the Department of Science and Technology, FICCI and the World Bank under the Info-Dev programme and it is being held in India for the first time. Over 300 participants including a half of them from about 60 countries are attending the forum. The five-day event includes a two-day conference and a two-day training programme aiming to provide a comprehensive training package focusing on crucial elements vital for a successful incubator programme i.e. resource mobilization, business plan, strategy development, operations, venture finance, legal marketing, IPR, networking etc.
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