Home » Posts tagged 'Innovation' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: Innovation
India Outlines Ambitious Agenda To Boost Startups As Well As Stem Their Exodus To Foreign Lands
Forbes Asia | January 18, 2016 | Saritha Rai |
The founders of InMobi, OYO Rooms and Mapmygenome in a selfie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Startup India event in New Delhi on Jan 16, 2016 (image: Anu Acharya)
Surrounded by hundreds of entrepreneurs in New Delhi on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Startup India action plan, intended to remove the many hurdles in the path of the country’s startups. The unveiling by Modi was from a pedestal bearing the phrase “We unobstacle” and the agenda spelled out tax breaks, a $1.5 billion government startup fund and the simplifying of countless archaic procedures throttling India’s thriving startup scene which now occupies center stage in the country’s business story. “The less the government is involved, the greater the progress,” Modi said in his speech echoing the widely-held perception that many of India’s companies flourish despite the government, not because of it. “Please tell us what not to do,” he told the 2,000-plus crowd comprising of guests such as Uber CEO & founder Travis Kalanick and Masayoshi Son of Japan’s SoftBank. Modi said his government would make it easier to start and shut down startups by cutting through India’s bureaucratic labyrinth.
India’s is one of the global startup hotspots. Yet, despite a thriving startup culture, the action plan is the government’s very first and has come on the back of many of India’s largest and creamiest startups fleeing to foreign destinations like Singapore and the United States where the regulation is less convoluted and tax laws are friendly. A slew of India’s biggest startups such as Flipkart, the country’s largest retailer, mobile advertising firm InMobi, customer support software maker Freshdesk and software products startup Capillary Technologies have all moved overseas and will likely list on foreign stock exchanges eventually. India’s software products think tank iSPIRT said a mind-boggling 75% of all funded technology startups are re-domiciling outside India due to regulatory irritants. “The government’s action plan is directionally correct. But the tangible progress on a checklist for startups to stay-in-India has been modest. We are hopeful that many more issues can be resolved in the forthcoming Indian budget in end February,” said Sharad Sharma, co-founder, iSPIRT.
The government’s action plan has come at a time when funding for startups is not as munificent as a year ago. Startups in segments like food, hyper-local delivery and real estate have laid off hundreds of employees, indicating that overvaluations are a thing of the past and investors are asking to see results. But India desperately needs entrepreneurs to start up companies and generate economic growth as well as jobs for the millions of engineering and other graduates entering the job market each year. The country’s biggest employer of engineers, its information technology industry, has been dawdling recently both in terms of growth and new hiring. “We have a million problems but we have a billion minds,” said Modi, who asked entrepreneurs to go to work on solving the country’s myriad challenges. The prime minister announced that registering a new company in India, a process that takes upwards of a month, would be cut down to a day and would be made possible through a mobile app. Patent fees will be slashed by 80% and patent applications would be fast-tracked. Startups will be able to self-certify and not be subjected to labor and environmental compliance rules for three years. The government’s new bankruptcy bill will allow companies with simple debt structures to shut down in 90 days in contrast to the existing tortuous process that lasts years. Into the weekend, entrepreneurs concurred that the new startup agenda is a good beginning. “It’s a fine plan with lots of interesting details, a lot will depend on how it is implemented,” said Anu Acharya, CEO & founder of Mapmygenome, a biotech startup. “What makes me hopeful is the awareness among top politicians and bureaucrats about the challenges entrepreneurs face,” she said. – Courtesy
Dr. Pradeep P. Thevannoor Innovation Awards 2015
Dr. Pradeep P. Thevannoor Innovation Awards 2015
SCMS School of Engineering and Technology , Cochin proudly announces a national contest for “Dr. Pradeep P. Thevannoor Innovation Awards” for the best new socially relevant and commercially viable innovative thought. We encourage the ideation for novel products, services and technologies from school and college level students, within India. The outcome of the competition can lead to a successful entrepreneurial venture . The competition is organised in association with Vodafone and Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam University (KTU) with technical support from Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Cell (IEDC) of SCMS School of Engineering and Technology (SSET), Karukutty, Ernakulam, Kerala, KSIDC, Kerala StartUp Mission and ICT Academy. We invite clear and fresh innovative ideas, having a real possibility of impacting the greater good, with a strong focus and chance of success and to become best products and practices
- Competition will be conducted in two categories- School Level and College Level. Students from all over India can participate
- Study projects and prize won projects need not be submitted.
- Submitters are asked to provide summary of their innovative idea.
- Based on the feasibility, novelty and social relevance, 15 Semi-finalists from each category will be selected by an expert panel.
- Semi-finalists will be asked to make an exhibition and describe their idea. Among them 5 finalists from each category will be selected.
- A maximum financial assistance (based on project estimate) of Rs. 5000 will be provided to the semi-finalists on completion of the exhibition of their idea.
- Finalists from school and college levels will make an interaction with a panel of judges to share and convince their idea on a public platform.
- Based on the project presentation and interaction, the judges’ panel will name a winner and runner-up from each category for “Dr. Pradeep P. Thevannoor Innovation competition”.
- The prize money for the college level is: Rs. 1 lakh (Winner) and Rs. 50,000 (runner-up), and for the school level is Rs. 50,000 (Winner) and Rs. 25,000 (runner-up).
- An assured prize money of Rs. 10,000 each will be granted for rest of the finalis
Highlight of the Program
Venture Capitalists are evaluating the program as judges, so that winners will get an additional opportunity to materialise the particular projects along.
Who Can Compete?
Participation Category 1: College Level – Students of Engineering colleges
Participation Category 2: School Level- High School Students (8th to 10th) and Higher secondary school Students (Plus one and Plus Two).
What’s the Team Size?
1 to 5 members per team. A team can present only one project. The team members cannot be changed during the competition
What’s the Deadline?
Online Abstract submissions close on December 21, 2015
What you should do?
- Title of the proposed project/ idea.
- Name, Postal address, email and contact number of the team members
- Identity proof (Scanned copy of the school/college identity card).
- Scope and Objectives of the project/ idea (30-75 words).
- Overall approach including Methodology/ Procedure/ Process of the Project (75-100 words)
- A description of the project with emphasis on the feasibility, social relevance and commercial viability. It should be between 450 words to 600 words.
- Brief explanation on how this project/ idea will present novel (new) or additive information to the existing practice.
- Financial estimate of the project.
- An affidavit on the originality of the idea/ project.
Judging Criteria for Abstracts
The abstract submitted by the participants is to be judged by an expert panel. The judges will be looking at the following criterion Innovation, demonstrated creativity and originality of idea, Technical merit, viability, commercialization strategy, Implementation feasibility and Supporting evidences.
Global rankings are not comprehensive
Gauri Kohli | Hindustan Times | October 24, 2015 |
Are Indian institutions really falling short of global standards or are the global rankings deficient in measuring all parameters that apply to the Indian system? Times Higher Education (THE) rankings, for instance, measure institutions on the basis of teaching, research: volume, income and reputation; citations: research influence; industry income: innovation; and international outlook: staff, students and research. Rahul Choudaha, chief knowledge officer and senior director of strategic development at the World Education Services, New York City, says, “Rankings in general are a proxy of reputation but do not fully capture the quality, complexity and diversity of higher education systems around the world. While it is critical to raise the bar of quality in Indian higher education, rankings are not the best metric at this stage of the maturity of the system. Before rankings, it is imperative to address two fundamentals of higher education systems – institutional accountability and regulatory framework. Unless a robust regulatory and quality assurance framework can ensure institutional accountability, the rankings will give misguided directions.”
Choudaha also adds a word of caution, saying that premature experiments with rankings will widen the gap between different types of institutions. “For example, well resourced institutions like IITs in niche technical fields will become the symbol of quality, while the system itself will be struggling due to an incoherent regulatory framework. Three-year degree colleges where nearly three-fourth of all Indian students study will further fall behind as rankings will focus on engineering,” he says. It is a fact that each ranking system, be it QS, THE or Shanghai looks at slightly different parameters. “Wherever similar parameters are used, there is a difference in weightage assigned and hence results could be different. However, some parameters that all these systems look at are publications in reputed peer reviewed journals, citations, collaborations and internationalisation. In these parameters, except a few institutes like IISc or IITs, others are certainly found wanting. These ranking systems do not look at social perspective of education, inclusiveness and participation of all category and strata of society,” says Anil D Sahasrabudhe, chairman, AICTE. – Courtesy
In the EYE of Kerala’s Innovation Storm; Arvind Sanjeev, DIY Hacking (Do It Yourself!)
The New Indian Express | 14th September 2015 |
Everybody would love to own a Google Glass. But the price tag that it carries and its rather uncertain release date have made it one of those out-of-reach propositions. Not for Kochi-based Arvind Sanjeev. He decided that he would try to make something along the same lines and ended up with the Smart Cap. “The glass was launched when I was studying Engineering at Toc H Institute of Science and Technology (TIST), Kerala and I was a big fan. With my technology grounding, I did not think it was any use spending so much money on it, so I decided to develop one of my own,” he quipped. And so it began. While at the hostel, with an allowance of just Rs 3,000 a month, Arvind decided to work on his own version of Google Glass. “I worked with everything that was readily available with me or could be easily procured from the market, to make the Smart Cap. There wasn’t too much that I needed that was beyond the scope of my reach, even at that point in time,” he explained with a short laugh. After working awhile, he came out with a head mounted device with camera and face recognition features.
Head mounted displays are primarily used for video sharing, navigation, checking notifications, etc. Their use in a device of this nature remain largely untested, “These glasses promote augmented reality, such that you can source every other detail of a person whose image is present in the camera,” he explained. In case he decides to market them, Arvind estimates they can be made available for as low as six to seven thousand rupees. But he doubts if it will ever be commercially produced. “ Such innovations are not developed with a commercial purpose. It is purely for the benefit and learning of students.” He wants to promote these innovations as open source learning so that the technology can be broken down and put across to students in a very basic format. Recounting where the inventorial spark was lit for him, he said, “When I was a kid, my parents would buy me battery operated toys. I was more fascinated in hacking the toy, than playing with it. Initially when I would take a toy apart, especially a new one that they’d just spent a lot of money buying, they would get really agitated and wonder what was wrong. When they saw that I could build something new using the components of the toys, they were amazed,” he reminisced. He confessed, “The internet provided me with a lot of knowledge and skill-based learning, much more than the education system did anyway.”
The hardware geek has also set up a company for lateral thinking called DIY Hacking — an open source platform where students can get guidance in fields such as start ups, internships and projects. “Most of the engineers graduate and find it hard to match to the skill requirement of tech firms and ultimately take up jobs with BPOs. In a bit to streamline this issue we have launched the DIY-hacking, a website, a non-profit organisation which works to promote the Maker culture and IoT based products from our country and create the engineering revolution India deserves. We provide free DIY tutorials, open source projects and eBooks which will allow an individual to prototype and bring their ideas to life.” Arvind is currently working as a fellow with the Kerala government’s initiative to set up the Kerala Start-up Mission in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, assisted by MIT. With lot more ideas and even greater zeal this young thinker is sure to drive India to its next level of technological development. We’re sure he’s going to get there soon! YOUNG GUN: He is working as a fellow with the Kerala government’s initiative to set up Fab Labs in Trivandrum and Kochi, assisted by MIT, who will help with development and innovation. – Courtesy
DIY Hacking (Do It Yourself!) is a non-profit organisation which works to promote the Maker culture and IoT based products from our country and create the engineering revolution India deserves. We provide a prolific range of free DIY tutorials, open source projects and eBooks which will allow an individual to prototype and bring their ideas to life! We also strive to setup Maker Labs and host workshops to tutor students on technology development and imparts pragmatic knowledge required for them to build products on their own! We mentor, support and guide thousands of students and individuals from the country through this platform. If you like what we are doing, you can also help us augment the platform and take it to the next level. Visit DIY Hacking (Do It Yourself!)
Accenture Launches Fourth Annual ‘Innovation Jockeys’ Contest, Powered by Yahoo India
Computer World | By ChannelWorld 17-Aug-2015 |
Campus contest -the hunt for India’s most innovative minds.
Accenture, in partnership with Yahoo India, has launched the fourth season of #Innovation Jockeys: The Hunt for India’s most Innovative Minds. Undergraduate, graduate and post graduate students across India are welcome to submit innovative ideas for using technology to transform India. This year’s contest, which will focus on disruptive technology innovations related to the themes ‘Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things’ and ‘Digital Application Marketplace’, aims to discover bright, young, home-grown innovators. “We’re looking for India’s next generation of innovators – young people with drive, passion and creativity who will make a difference in the way businesses and society function,” said Raghavan Iyer, Managing Director, Technology Delivery and Innovation Council lead for Accenture in India.
Further added, “In the previous three seasons, the program drew over 7,180 idea submissions from over 900 campuses and more than 125,300 newsletter sign-ups from students at more than 1,000 colleges across India. We have seen an encouraging response each year and are expecting more students to participate and showcase their solutions.” This year’s contest winners will be selected by a renowned jury, consisting of Ravi Gururaj, Chair – Product Council & Member – Executive Council, NASSCOM; Kalyan Veeramachaneni, Research Scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Unni Aravindakshan, Vice President – Production Engineering and Head, Yahoo Software Development India; Raj Dam, Founder, QuizWorks; Vinay Gupta, CEO, Via.com; Nandini Vaidyanathan, CMD, CARMa Venture Services and Alok Goyal, Partner at Helion Advisors.
“Over the last three years, Innovation Jockeys has surfaced ideas that solve real-world problems and make a difference in our daily lives. We are happy to be part of the process that fosters this innovation. We are looking forward to how India’s bright young minds will innovate and push the envelope this year, as they take on new challenges,” said Unni Aravindakshan, Vice President – Production Engineering and Head, Yahoo Software Development India. Each member of the winning team will receive a trip to Accenture Technology Labs, San Francisco, a Lenovo tablet and an Apple iPhone 6. Winning entries for each category will also receive an Apple iPad and a Pebble Smart Watch. The five most popular ideas will win an Amazon Kindle. To find out more and participate in Innovation Jockeys: The Hunt for India’s most Innovative Minds, log on to http://innovationjockeys.net/. The deadline for submitting entries is September 20, 2015. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 6, 2015 in Bangalore. – Courtesy
India’s Kumbh Mela Is Used an Incubator for Smart City Startup Ideas: Kumbhathons
The Wall Street Journal Blog | India | Krishna Pokharel | 03 August 2015 |
Hindu pilgrims take a dip at the start of the holy Kumbh Mela in Nashik, India, July 14, 2015. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Can India’s Kumbh Mela–a religious pilgrimage that at its peak is expected to attract around 30 million people to the western city of Nashik this year–provide ideas for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who plans to build 100 smart cities in the country? Technology experts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their associates think it can. The monthslong Kumbh Mela is a Hindu festival that takes place once every three years rotating around four cities—Haridwar, Allahabad, Nashik and Ujjain. In July, the western Indian city of Nashik, usually known for its vineyards and little else, took its turn, transforming itself into a metropolis with increased temporary housing, healthcare and policing as its population surges during the pilgrimage. The peak of the current festival, scheduled to last just over a year, is expected to be in August and September, when devotees will take a dip in the Godavari River on four different auspicious days. About eight million pilgrims are expected to participate in each of those days. Hindus believe doing so will wash away their sins and rid them of the cycle of death and rebirth.
MIT researchers for their part believe the festival presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs to devise technological solutions to the challenge of building large cities in a short time that can be tested, firmed up and then replicated across India. To provide those solutions, they are holding ‘Kumbhathons’—weeklong innovation camps attended by citizens, governments and corporates. Sandip Shinde, co-founder of the Kumbha Foundation, a non-profit that has organized five Kumbhathon events in the past 18 months in association with MIT, says the project aims to develop solutions that can be rolled out to other Indian cities.
“The main objective and goal for everybody including MIT Media Lab and people working around is actually creating impact on the citizens and bring innovation culture in city like Nashik so that it can be replicated in any other city in India,” said Mr. Shinde, who is on a sabbatical for a year from his job at Tata Consultancy Services one of India’s biggest outsourcers, in Pune to volunteer at Kumbh Mela. “It’s about helping the smart citizens make their cities smart,” said John Werner, head of innovations and new ventures for Camera Culture Group at MIT Media Lab that has been spearheading the Kumbhathon. “The fact that people have these mobile devices and these tools that they can use; we can change the future of cities.”
The idea for the innovation camps emerged about two years back when two Nashik natives, Sunil Khandbahale, developer of Khandbahale, a multilingual online dictionary, and Ramesh Raskar, associate professor at MIT Media Lab, met. “We were looking for right opportunity to sensitize [a] community for innovation and Kumbh Mela event was just the perfect match to experiment looking at its scale and diversified challenges like housing, transportation, sanitation, health, policing, security, communication, food, safety, crowd steering etc.,” Mr. Khandbahale said in an emailed response to questions. “Indians have a familiar ability to adapt to varying circumstances in seeming chaos but we know that there is a method to their madness,” Mr. Raskar at MIT said. “Kumbhathon aims to concentrate this spirit of innovation.” The first Kumbhathon event was held in January 2014 in Nashik. Students from engineering and medical colleges in the city were invited to join in and more than 1,050 potential problems that arise at the Kumbh Mela were crowd sourced from students and citizens. Eventually, the innovators chose 12 problems to focus on, including housing, transportation and sanitation, and developed prototypes of their solutions. Some of those ideas have already emerged as mobile apps and projects.
An official Kumbh Mela smartphone app gives pilgrims information about the routes they should take for bathing in the holy Godavari River, the center of Kumbh Mela, as well as live traffic information, availability of hotel rooms and hospital beds and the location of stores and banks. An epidemic tracker app gives doctors and authorities information for tracing any likely spread of disease during the pilgrimage by capturing location, gender, age group, symptoms about the patients. The MediTracker app gives information about ambulances and hospitals in the vicinity. Meanwhile, the Kumbhathon’s crowd-steering project helps authorities determine how many people have congregated at a particular location using signals collected from mobile phone towers. “It is of immense help in crowd management,” said Praveen Gedam, commissioner of Nashik Municipal Corporation. “Based on the analytics of data we are receiving from nearest mobile towers we can predict the movement of crowd—how it is moving from one part of city to other part of city.” The pop-up housing project helps conveniently house thousands of sadhus, or Hindu holy men, who congregate during the festival. The next Kumbhathon event is scheduled for January and the Kumbha Foundation and MIT Media Lab are in the process of registering the Nashik Innovation Center, a non-profit company, to provide common space to the innovators and experts “to help progress innovations and build entrepreneurial skills,” according to Mr. Werner at MIT Media Lab. “Originally, it was like how we scale up to pop-up cities like Kumbh Mela,” said Mr. Werner. “Now we are thinking this not just of Kumbh Mela and pop-up cities but help non-metro cities reach their potential.”- Courtesy
Innovation, industry relation hold key to future technology: Infosys Co-founder SD Shibulal
Friday, Jul 24, 201 |
Thiruvananthapuram | Innovation and client relevance along with deeper industry-institution interaction holds the key to the future of technology industries in the country, Infosys Co-founder SD Shibulal said here today. Speaking at a seminar on ?Future of Technology Industries and How Organizations are preparing for it? organized by ICTAK, he said parameters such as reduced cost and timely execution of projects have become a thing of the past. In the changing world of today, innovation and the ability to provide solutions and services that are relevant in an ever changing scenario holds the key to the future. Golden opportunity awaits those who tap into the tremendous energy and new thinking of the current generation, he said.
Stressing on the need for deeper and closer industry-institution interaction, he said ICTAK was step in the right direction with the Industry joining hands with the Government, and heading and partnering an initiative that simultaneously upgrades skills of teachers and employability of students. He stressed on the need for enhancing the pipeline of talent going to research and teaching, pointing out that currently only 1% of graduates opt for research and many get into teaching only when no other opportunity is available.
He said an atmosphere of reward, respect and research has to be created for infusing quality into technology and technical teaching. Expressing happiness at the number of start up initiatives in the IT sector, Mr.Shibulal advised that a successful endeavor has to have a mindset of sprint Vs Marathon, attuned in favour of Marathon; Idea Vs Solution, tilted toward Solution; and Individual Vs Team, veered in favour of the Team with a collective set of people with mutually exclusive skills coming together. Above all, he said all start ups must have a clear leader leading the initiatives. Earlier inaugurating the event, Kerala Industries and IT secretary P H Kurian said all the 164 engineering colleges in Kerala would have a FabLab to aid innovations and fresh initiatives within the next three years, with industry participation.
The formation of the Kerala Technological University last year has provided a fresh impetus to technical education in the State, and the revamping of the syllabi has reached a critical stage. ICTAK was playing a pivotal role in the process. He added that the Kerala Government was investing heavily in IT infrastructure at a bullish pace, and the increased facilities would be available for private players within the next two to three years. ICTAK CEO Santhosh Kurup, who moderated the proceedings, said since its inception in June last year, the Academy has so far trained more than 1600 faculty members and 1800 students with participation of as many as 53 colleges. Mr Shibulal is also Chairman of Information and Communication Technology Academy of Kerala (ICTAK).- Courtesy
MIT-Make in India’ project: Forging entrepreneurs in India
The Hindu | Thiruvananthapuram, July 17, 2015 | |
Twenty students of engineering are being mentored as entreprenuers by Rajesh Nair through MIT
Academic and innovator Rajesh Nair on his hands-on approach to turn engineering students into entrepreneurs through the ‘MIT-Make in India’ project.
Entrepreneurs are being made in Chirayinkeezhu, a quiet coastal town in Thiruvananthapuram the district. Twenty students of engineering, 10 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States (U.S.) and 10 from colleges in India are being mentored by Rajesh Nair, an academic, entrepreneur and innovator, who is convinced that entrepreneurs are made and not born. The first of its kind, Rajesh hopes that the project will encourage colleges to create employers and not only employees. The founder of the decade-old TechTop, a contest for innovators among students of engineering, Rajesh says with missionary zeal that his dream is to create at least 10 to 20 per cent entrepreneurs in colleges in India. A graduate of MIT, 54-year-old Rajesh is Director of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center at the Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur. A visiting scholar at MIT-Tata Center, he also heads Degree Controls Inc., his company that has been operating in the U.S. for 17 years.
Excerpts from an interview with the professor at his tharavad.
What it the ‘MIT- Make in India’ project about?
Under the auspices of MIT, the 20 students are being taught how to apply what they learnt in college to address real-life situations, to identify what the community needs and come up with solutions to help the community and thus nurture their potential entrepreneurial talent.
What happens during the four-week course?
We visited various places in the locality such as a Kudumbasree unit, a hospital, a fishing village and so on, saw the lives of people at close quarters and learnt about their problems. They chose what they felt could be turned into viable projects through innovative projects that help the people too (see box).
How did this project come about?
A mid-life crisis took me back to MIT, not to gain degrees but to see what impact I could make, to see if I could catalyse a positive change. That is when I got the MIT-Tata Center fellowship at MIT from Ratan Tata who wanted us to go to India and study problems of resource-constrained communities and come up with solutions. So I studied issues concerning water, health and so on. I found that India is rich in innovators who had come up with solutions to many problems but it stopped there. There is a dearth of entrepreneurs to take those innovations to the community. It is a cultural bias that is preventing youngsters from maximising their potential.
You are saying that entrepreneurship can be taught?
Yes. Unfortunately, the currency of many of our colleges is placements and not training job creators. Most colleges and universities don’t teach kids to apply what they have learnt, to approach a problem, find a solution and make it viable for the community. Nobody buys technology for technology’s sake but we pay money for technology that creates solutions for problems. Problems are basically opportunities in disguise and students must to taught to identify those problems and come up with solutions to those. It is those students who contribute to the wealth of the country.
How do you hone the skills of potential entrepreneurs?
Primarily I work to build self-confidence in my students. Actually there is no difference in intelligence between a student in a college in a small town in India and a student of any highly ranked colleges anywhere in the world. What makes the difference is the exposure they get. A student of MIT sees her friends setting up companies in the hostel room and negotiating deals. That becomes her benchmark and her ecosystem. Unfortunately, many of our colleges in small town India lack resources and many faculty members themselves are kids just out of college, some of whom have taken up teaching without practical experience.
Can the project change that mindset and unleash the potential and imagination of youngsters?
My professor at MIT wanted me to prove my theory that entrepreneurs can be made, by training students in a small college on innovation process. I began the experiment in Mar Baselios College in the city in December 2013. At the end of it, more than half of the students came around to the idea of beginning to work for themselves as a possibility. I wanted to see if it would work in another college. So I went to colleges in Muzaffarnagar and Warananagar in Maharashtra and each time the results were impressive. Many start-ups emerged from this experiment. If you don’t show them the right path now, 20 years later, these kids will be stuck in the same place. Their own artificially constructed cages prevent them from tapping their potential.
Is that why you began TechTop?
I have been coming to India often for the last 27 years. You see many TV programmes for dancers and singers but nothing for innovators. So I began Tech Top in 2005 with a prize money of Rs. One lakh to promote innovators in small and rural colleges. When MIT wanted me to begin the programme for them, I requested them for 10 of their students. I posted on Facebook inviting applications from Indian students. My family generously allowed me to use the premises of my ancestral home. I wanted the students to live and work together because these lessons cannot be taught in a classroom or online. There is no fixed schedule. This place has a Fablab equipped with 3D printers, electronic fabrication facilities and so on.
BRAND KADHA
One of the groups visited a Kudumbasree unit making soaps. They felt that the locally marketed handmade organic soaps had the potential to be marketed in the U.S., Japan and Europe. I invited the women to show them the process and the students tried their hand at making the soaps. Calling the brand Kadha – The stories within (storywith.in), the students are highlighting the fact that each soap empowers a woman financially and tells a story of her journey in search of empowerment. They pitched it to a group of upmarket hoteliers who have promised to help them. They are starting it as a venture now. That is the kind of initiative we are hoping to inculcate in the students. Courtesy
Ahmedabad LD Engineering College students design eco-friendly dual-fuel engine
Auto | Economic Times | |
AHMEDABAD: Four LD Engineering College students Rushil Mehta, Ankit Chauhan, Jay Patel, and Mohit Khatri have innovated a dual-fuel engine that operates on both diesel and natural gas. Mehta said, “Diesel fuel acts as a spark plug. It auto ignites under compression and then ignites the gas.” He said natural gas can be introduced into combustion chamber by either mixing it with airflow or injecting it into manifold orchamber. He said: “The dual-fuel operation doesn’t involve any major engine modification, only a pre-mixer is attached on the inlet manifold,” he said.
“In dual fuel engines, at low loads when the gaseous fuel concentration is low, ignition delay period of the pilot fuel increases and some of the homogeneously dispersed gaseous fuel remains unburned and results in poor performance. A concentrated ignition source is needed for the combustion of the induced fuel at low loads. Further, the injection timing of the pilot fuel, injector opening pressure, pilot fuel quantity and intake temperature are some of the important variables controlling the performance of dual fuel engines at high loads.” he added. Patel said: “This process has the advantage of instant switchover to diesel-only operation, in case natural gas is unavailable. The degree of diesel replacement by natural gas depends on – the engine operating conditions and the engine design to some extent, typically varying from 60% to 70%. The dual fuel technology has been much more successfully used in engines with slow variation of load, where the engine speed varies in a small range. The use of diesel fuel allows the retention of the diesel compression ratio and its efficiency while the natural gas contributes to economy and is responsible for lower emissions.”Some of the claimed benefits of the engine are lower emissions and less harmful pollutants in the exhaust gas which helps to reduce the percentage of green house gases and prevents global warming to some extent; the kit can be attached to the diesel engine currently fitted in the three wheelers,pumps,generators etc. without any modification in the engine; there are no sensors in the kit and it is fully manual. Therefore, the cost of the kit is 25,000. – Courtesy
E-scooter lands engineering student (V.R. Manikandan) in trouble: electric bike – Radham
SMOOTH RIDE:V.R. Manikandan with his electric bike in Manamadurai in Sivaganga district on Wednesday.— Photo :L. BALACHANDAR
The Hindu | Tamil Nadu | SIVAGANGA| February 24, 2015 | |
SIVAGANGA: The eco-friendly electric scooter unveiled by V.R. Manikandan, a Mechanical Engineering student, on February 18 ran into trouble even before it could be developed to the next stage as a Chennai-based company filed a complaint against him for committing criminal breach of trust. As Mr. Manikandan claimed that he had developed “Radham”, the scooter, and demonstrated its prowess at Manamadurai, P.J. Anoop Nishanth, who owned Maxx Speed Designs (MSD), filed a complaint with Sivaganga Superintendent of Police Ashwin M Kotnis on February 20, alleging that Mr. Manikandan had stolen his product and showcased it as his own.
After police registered a case against him under Sections 420, 406 and 345 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on February 20, Mr. Manikandan returned the bike to Nishant the next day, the police said. The SP said preliminary enquiries revealed that Mr. Manikandan had developed the scooter but the project was fully funded by MSD, to the tune of Rs. 18 lakh. Mr. Manikandan claiming ownership for the bike amounted to cheating, the SP said, adding he was free to fight for his intellectual rights before the appropriate forum. Mr. Nishant said he was a postgraduate in Automotive Design and worked as an industrial designer with India Japan Lighting in TVS Group before he floated MSD. He was developing an electric scooter in August 2013, when he was introduced to Mr. Manikandan, who was also interested in automotive innovations. Later, Mr. Manikandan started working with him in developing the electric scooter, periodically visiting his Chennai unit. After the prototype of the electric scooter was made ready by him, Mr. Manikandan suggested that the road test could be conducted in Manamadurai and took the prototype vehicle. Meanwhile, he started Meaben Motors Private Limited and included Mr. Manikandan as one of the directors, but they ran into trouble over equity shares issue, he said in the complaint.
Engineering, Science & Technology Resources Portal 