Kochi based public private telecom business incubator Startup Village has received Rs 150 crore investment from the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Kerala government, reports TechCircle. Startup Village chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar told the publication that both DST and the Kerala government have allocated an investment of Rs 75 crore apiece. They plan to use the investment to improve Startup Village's infrastructure and help other non-member startups and entrepreneurs in the state. Vijayakumar said they are currently incubating 400 startups, of which 350 are virtual incubatees and this investment will allow them to build a 5-lakh square foot (sq ft) structure at Startup Village, through which it can incubate more startups physically. It hopes to incubate around 1,000 startups in the next few years. Setup in April 2012, Startup Village was launched in a public-private partnership model between Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Technopark Trivandrum and mobile VAS company MobME Wireless. The company had received 10,000 sq ft additional space in November 2012 and was hoping to setup a one lakh sq ft campus by 2014. It currently has an incubator, an accelerator and a $10 million angel fund, for which it received SEBI's approval in May 2013. Some of Startup Village incubatees include the social music sharing app #nwplyng, branding studio WowMakers, online and mobile payment system Payd, citizen centric mobile app development firm MindHelix, iTraveller which provides a cloud based ERP for tour operators and travel agents, Profoundis Labs which provides business analytics and optimization solutions to enterprise, social decision making platform DecideQuick and others. Other Accelerators and incubators in India include The Morpheus,…
