SV.CO and Facebook join hands to promote student entrepreneurship

SV.CO, a digital incubator for students, has organised a six-month entrepreneurship programme for students and joined hands with Facebook to provide access to its developer teams in Menlo Park, California.

Facebook is offering guidance and mentorship to Indian engineering students aspiring to become entrepreneurs through SV.CO, the newly launched digital platform of Startup Village, which has been ranked as India’s best startup incubator.

As a part of the SV.CO Startup Programme, 50 students will make a six-day trip to California where they will also get an oppotunity to present their ideas to the Facebook team and get feedback on them.

“The purpose of the visit to Silicon Valley is to provide students with a priceless opportunity to absorb and learn from technology companies such as Facebook. Students will get to meet talented professionals from around the world and learn all about creating successful startups,” said Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman, Startup Village.

As the “Host Startup” of the programme, students will be part of the FBStart programme and in addition to providing  guidance in building products, Facebook will also contribute in the course content of the SV.CO’s programme framework.

"India is known for great technology and engineering talent, and we are keen to create more opportunities for students to share their creativity and innovation to the world. We are pleased to join hands with SV.CO and support their goal of providing a platform to students to build sustainable startups.” said Satyajeet Singh, Product Partnerships, Facebook.

“I am glad that Facebook is supporting SV.CO's mission of building a world class startup ecosystem for college students. SV.CO will explore more such collaborations and provide campus startups with the right opportunities to succeed.” said Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chief Mentor, Startup Village.

SV.CO, the digital makeover of Kochi-based Startup Village, which is India’s first PPP model technology incubator, will conduct the six-month “Silicon Valley Programme” for up to 50 engineering student startups selected from across the country. Each startup would comprise around 3-5 students.

SV.CO, which was launched on July 13 as the second phase of Startup Village for a national scale up, aims to provide a fully digital incubation framework to five million students in 3,500 engineering colleges across the country. The National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Government of India, has approved SV.CO as its Host Institute. ENDs