Hyderabad, India, May 12, 2018 – The Telangana State Innovation Cell, set up under the leadership of the Minister for IT KT Rama Rao last year, has launched a first-of-its-kind fellowship program to attract young professionals from diverse background to work with the Government in driving innovation in the State. The first cohort of Innovation Fellows were inducted, and the program was formally launched by the Minister today. The Telangana State Innovation Cell has invited several partners including Ashoka Innovators for the Public (Ashoka.org) to build the culture of change making in the state.
The Fellowship Program is a one-year program, conceptualized to enable visionary and motivated professionals to work with the Government, towards the vision of building an innovation-driven economy in the State. The selection process was highly competitive where less than 1% of the applicants made it to the final selection. The candidates have been selected based on an extensive process including resume short listing, essay evaluation, and personal interviews. The cohort includes Entrepreneurs, Engineers, Social development professionals, students from journalism and arts and a lawyer with each of them having their own ideas to nurture the culture of innovation in the State. A few projects the Innovation Fellows are leading include working with schools to promote a culture of innovation thinking, kick starting innovation and entrepreneurship activity at District level, promoting startup incubators, creating mentor ecosystem and promoting grass-root innovators.
Supporting Quotes
Honorable Minister of ITE&C, Industries & Commerce, NRI Affairs, and MA&UD Sri K. T Rama Rao, said, “In today’s world, innovation is of prime significance. Innovation improves the quality of life by improving productivity, reducing cost, and increasing wages. Countries that have nurtured innovation in their societies have leapfrogged their economies and quality of life. Telangana Government is committed to building a strong innovation-driven economy in the State. With this in mind, we launched the State Innovation Cell, which is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country.
The State Innovation Cell’s goal is to make Telangana a land of innovators, just like Gujarat is known as a land of businessmen. The Cell will work towards building strong awareness about the importance of innovation, and I hope this will result in creating at least one innovator in each family.
I wish the Innovation Fellows the very best in their endeavor of building the culture of innovation in the State of Telangana.”
Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, ITE&C and I&C, said, “This is a unique initiative launched by the Government to promote innovation in the State, and will complement our other initiatives such as T-Hub, RICH, T-Works, WE-Hub etc. but will focus more on innovation as a whole and across the State and not just in Hyderabad and hi-tech startups. As with our other initiatives, we brought in highly motivated individuals from the private sector and enabled them to deliver with minimum interference from the Government. I am confident that this initiative will be a huge success and will only expand in the years to come. Our focus now will be on studying the progress of the first cohort over the next few months to refine the program in future.”
Phanindra Sama, Chief Innovation Officer, said, “An ambitious project of this nature needs people with diverse skills to work together to create innovative solutions. The Fellows have been carefully chosen from diverse backgrounds so that this diversity will aid in creating such solutions.
We look forward to the support and suggestions from fellow citizens of all walks of life to make this endeavor a success. We look forward to the active participation of the society in transforming Telangana as a land of innovators.”