IBM to drive Startup Incubation with TurningIdeas
16th December, New Delhi – India’s most prolific Incubation and acceleration platform TurningIdeas today announced it has inked a partnership with technology major IBM to collaborate in identifying and connecting with compelling technology startups across educational institutes in the country. With this partnership TurningIdeas will be launching the nationwide IBM TurningIdeas IDEASPARK challenge as a part of the IBM Global Entrepreneur program from today. The challenge looks to find a product or service that answers a real-world need in business or the society.
India today has numerous people with entrepreneurial ambitions and many who nurture an idea. The country’s educational institutes are the breeding grounds of prolific ideas but most never come to fore because of inherent structural problems in the system. TurningIdeas and IBM envisage an ecosystem where the brightest and the best in our educational establishments get a platform to showcase their idea and realize their dreams. Beyond that, the programme will also be an experiential learning exercise that encourages student to innovate and find answers to basic problems. The prime focus of the challenge is to ensure students become job creators and not mere job seekers.
The challenge will be held across 400 institutes (universities and colleges) spread across the country, where the first stage will be the presentation of the idea. After three levels of screening the final winners will receive mentoring and incubation from TurningIdeas while the winners will get full technology support from IBM. This one of a kind mentoring from leaders and veterans in the space, coupled with technology support from IBM will ensure the winners become the next big thing in the entrepreneurial landscape of the country.
Speaking at the event , Ashish Mittal ,Founder TurningIdeas said “TurningIdeas along with IBM will give the universities/college students a platform to think BIG and out of box and innovate faster”
TurningIdeas provides young talent a platform to three point course of action – Ideate, Incubate and Innovate. As an incubator, TurningIdeas mandate is to speed up the growth trajectory of early stage startups and accelerate its success. Not only does it provide dynamic startups common services and co-working spaces, it provides a unique blend of coaching, mentorship, networking connections and helps develop business and marketing plans that give structure and direction to a startup.
While TurningIdeas will provide mentoring and support, IBM will offer its top of the line cloud platform – Bluemix. Bluemix is an open-standard, cloud-based platform for building, managing, and running apps of all types, such as web, mobile, big data, and smart devices. Capabilities include Java, mobile back-end development, and application monitoring, as well as features from ecosystem partners and open source—all provided as-a-service in the cloud. These services would be beneficial for startups to adapt and implement their ideas at the shortest time possible.
To participate in the contest, the startups have to first enroll into the IDEASPARK Program, which can be done by logging into ideaspark.turningideas.com To enroll, a startup should be less than 2 years old, should be a private organization, and should have an existing product or platform.
About TurningIdeas
TurningIdeas was founded by Ashish Mittal (an ex-Googler, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM) with a vision of replicating Harvard and Stanford in India. The platform provides mentoring, incubation and accelerator support to startup ideas emerging from Universities/Colleges.