sristi's Techpedia.in

GESIA and GTU Innovation Council are creating an inclusive innovation agenda for Electronics, Computing and IT/ITES section.

2011-07-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

As you are aware that, GESIA have been taking up lead role for betterment of ICT Business in State and taking this further, have initiated step towards human development in the field of ICT.

For the same, Skills for Engineers are to be enhanced and they are to be provided with good industry support during their study tenure. We have already extended our support to Gujarat Technological University (GTU) on this front.

Hereby we are sending you the;
· Presentation focusing on GTU SAnkul details and GESIA’s methodology of collaborating with GTU
· Data to fill up the details of your contribution & support towards the initiative taken (Pls resend us duly filled data via return email - In Attached Excel sheet)

We are expecting the enormous support for our own business development and state development in the field of ICT. Please fill up the details in the form by 1st of June 2011

Best Regards

Jaimin Shah
President
Gujarat Electronics & Software Industries Association
709, Akshat Tower, Behind Pakwan - 2, S. G. Highway, Ahmedabad - 380015, Gujarat, India
Tel.: +91-79-40020313, 14 | Fax: +91-79-40020315
Email: info@gesia.org
Website: www.gesia.org

GICEA and GESIA joins hand with GTU Innovation Council for integrating technology minds for solving IDPs via a systematic effort at GTU and Techpedia.in

2011-07-07T14:48:00.002-07:00

29,495 Students of Electronics,Computer,IT/ITES of GTU Innovation Council will be mapped to corresponding industries of GESIA (Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association)

Meeting with the Executive Committee Members of Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association (GESIA)

The Executive Committee Members, representing GESIA met Dr Akshai Aggarwal at GTU Conference Hall and offered to extend help to the GTU Innovation Council for innovations in the fields of Electronics and Communication, Computer and Information Technology. Since the association has hundreds of members across the state, it will nominate its members for each of the 25 Sankuls so that students in its fields of interest may be able to connect with the industries.

Mapping for MCA and B.E. (Computer Engineering, Electronics and Communication andInformation Technology) students is required to be done so that Pre Final Year students, after their examinations in May 2011, can go to the respective industries for their Industry Defined Problem (IDP). About 19% of GTU students fall in the areas of interest of GESIA. Most of the Electronic and software industries lie outside the conventional industrial estates. It was decided that GESIA will give one or two senior members for each of the 25 Sankuls so that every Sankul Committee may be able to deal with the requirements of the students in the fields of interest of GESIA.

Mr. Jaimin Shah, President, GESIA, elaborated on how GESIA can enhance the capacity of the GTU Innovation Council and announced that motivational speakers and young industrial leaders would visit GTU classrooms to motivate students to endeavor for innovation in this particular field. Mr. Pankaj Shah, Honorary Secretary, GESIA stressed the practical learning methodology to be implemented in GTU Innovation Council. Mr. Kirti Thakkar, President, ACMA, stressed on real-time innovation work. All dignitaries present appreciated the user-defined innovation system methodology in which problems will be scouted according to users’ needs and will be developed as per the users’ feedback in that particular vertical.

It was decided that the Honorary Secretary, GESIA and Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta from Techpedia, along with the support of other members from GESIA and the GTU Innovation Council, will create the required framework for the process within two weeks.

News from GTU Innovation Sankul at Surendranagar:

Dr.Gopal R. Kulkarni, Co-Chairperson (Academic) of the Sankul has been asked by DRDA (District Rural Development Agency to ask the MCA students to take up projects, which improve rurban IT infrastructure. Innovative technologists will be a real boon for our Society

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(Gujarat Institute of Civil Engineers and Architects ) joins hands with GTU Innovation Council for creating Innovation Ecosystem in Civil Engineering at GTU

After establishing more than 300 Innovation clubs (UDISHA clubs) successfully in all the Sankuls, GTU Innovation Council has been establishing working relationships with state-wide associations in different vertical areas. Dr Rupesh Vasani organized a meeting of the Executive Committee Members of Gujarat Institute of Civil Engineers and Architects (GICEA) with Dr. Akshai Aggarwal at GTU Conference Hall .

Dignitaries like Mr. Bharat Modi, Mr. Vatsal Patel, Mr. Bhadresh Shah, Mr. Dilip Patel, Mr. Mukesh Majeethia and Mr. Bakul Desai from the GICEA and Prof. Rupesh Vasani from SAL Institute were present. GTU Innovation Council expects GICEA to join hands with Civil Engineering (CE) departments of GTU Colleges to create an ecosystem for teachers and students to revolutionize the present state of education in CE and Architecture. Most of the Builders and many of the CE firms lie outside the conventional industrial estates. It was decided that GICEA will give one or two senior members for each of the 25 Sankuls so that every Sankul Committee may be able to deal with the requirements of the students in the fields of interest of GICEA. Mr. Modi said that GICEA has around 5000 members across the stateand hence few members would be nominated in each Sankul form GECIA.

During industrial Shodhyatras, 4-5 students and faculty will be linked to dedicated industry of this sector to define their flow issues and problems scouted from the floors of industries by professors and industry people. The field engineers may support the students work as mentors when the students are working on the Final Year project during the next two semesters.

Mr. Bharat Modi, President, GICEA said that GTU Innovation Council could effectively use the infrastructure of GICEA for optimum benefit by various civil engineering departments. Mr. Bhadresh Shah emphasized on the need for creating experts in every niche field in civil engineering, especially transportation and environment. He also suggested benchmarking the present curriculum with

respect to the present industrial needs and joint evaluation of the problem statements.

GICEA members suggested that small modular courses during holidays/week-ends could be designed for civil engineering students and faculty, based upon the need of cutting edge demands at present. Dr. Aggarwal said that any Innovation Sankul could take up Continuing Education programs, in consultation with the Council.

Some experts suggested breaking bigger problems into smaller modules and sharing it with multiple student groups for a better innovation process. Also, a mindset of ethical, innovative research work has to be brought about.A few industries may also support students financially in shaping their theoretical ideas. At the meeting an emphasis was laid on more practical work at polytechnics and engineering colleges. GECIA offered to profile labs for material testing, CAD and other state-of-the-art facilities available at

their premises. A top team of GECIA authorities will support GTU Innovation Council in the civil engineering vertical Prof. Rupesh Vasani pledged to take a lead role from the academic side for designing the required framework.

Name Organization (with which the person is affiliated)

Mr. Bharatbhai Modi President, GICEA

Mr. Vatsal Patel ex-President GICEA, Deputy Town Planner, AMC

Mr. Bhadresh Shah ex-President GICEA

Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta Managing Director, Techpedia

Mr. Dilip S Patel Vice-President, GICEA

Mr. Mukesh Majeethia Vice-President, GICEA

Mr. Bakul N Desai Secretary, GICEA

Dr. Rupesh P Vasani ,Principal, SAL Institute of Technology & Engineering ,Research, Ahmedabad

Mapping of Energy and Environment MSMEs and corresponding research departments at GTU Innovation Council by joint efforts of Techpedia.in and GTU

2011-07-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

72 GIDCs (Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation ) have been linked to 500 colleges under GTU Innovation Council in 25 Innovation Sankuls by GTU and Techpedia.in

2011-07-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

GTU Innovation Council has decided to create 50 Sectoral Innovation Councils in phase one involving its 4867 Degree Engineering and 3886 Diploma Engineering Professors to create virtual center of excellence in each discipline

2011-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

GTU Innovation Council has decided to create 50 Sectoral Innovation Councils in phase one involving its 4867 Degree Engineering and 3886 Diploma Engineering Professors to create virtual center of excellence in each discipline

GTU Innovation Council ( www.gtuinnovationcouncil.ac.in ) has geared up in scaling the inputs as well as outputs in democratizing innovation management process in the state. It has already established 25 Innovation sankuls involving 2.5 lac students, 500 colleges, 34,500 SMEs with direct linkages at GTU inside Gujarat. Phase I of the project have involved 37000 graduate and 1900 post graduate engineers, 41,800 Diploma engineers, 6800 B. Pharma, 1900 M. Pharmacy, 12000 MBA graduates and 4900 MCA graduates. In quantity and quality this innovation council effort has been unique in the globe by now. National Innovation Council, NIC headed by Advisor to Sam Pitroda have already established 10 State Innovation Councils inAndaman and Nicobar Islands, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka. Gujarat is yet to make it in this league of states for creating its own state innovation council. Similarly NIC have created 12 Sectoral innovation councils in the country involving various Govt. departments.National Innovation Council (NIC) proposed the creation of Cluster Innovation Centers (CIC) at universities and GTU has become the country’s 1st large scale state Technical University to not only implement this but also has created its own locally relevant innovation frameworks.While the policymakers of the nation are busy in creating the road maps, within a short span of 6 months GTU Innovation Council have not only created its own road map of creating innovation clusters but also implemented it where nearly 55,000 young technical students are in Industrial Shodh Yatra in this summer for benchmarking the technology, energy, waste with respect to each MSMEs. The students in 113 disciplines in UG and PG level at GTU will convert these industry defined projects as their final year project where they will put 10 months of effort each in trying to solve them.

GTU Innovation Council has decided to create 50 Sectoral Innovation Councils in phase one involving its 4867 Degree Engineering and 3886 Diploma Engineering Professors. These Sectoral councils again will have parallel teams from industry chambers/discrete industries and Professors/expert academicians of the sectors. Young technology students will directly participate in this councils.GTU has started process of linking 72 GIDCs of state in majority cases the architecture of such sectoral councils are under process. After creating 25 Regional Sankuls/clusters now GTU Innovation Council is focusing to create center of excellence for each stream of Engineering In the state.

The Sectoral Councils are expected to provide a range of services to universities and their partners from encouraging innovative ideas, to promoting inter/multi disciplinary research, providing training and support on innovation and entrepreneurship, developing ideas into innovative applications, facilitating collaborations with industry and society, advice on IP management, commercialization and marketing of these applications to benefit society at large etc.The Sectoral Innovation Councils will be engaged in creating new domains of knowledge, new teaching learning methodologies and new forms of organization and networking in particular sectors involving the industry counterparts. Without any public or private support system the GTU Innovation Council has significantly progressed in not only visualizing these models but it has well implemented in various geographic location of the state.Techpedia.in will appeal it’s all expert mentors from NMN (national Mentoring Network) headed by Padmabhushan Dr. R.A.Mashelkar to contribute to these unique sectoral councils in the state.

GTU Innovation Council believes for successful innovation in clusters a suitable ecosystem, where open interactions between the stakeholders are present, is imperative. Innovation benefits from cross-fertilization between organizations and needs to break the traditional barriers for knowledge sharing and move towards co-creation of knowledge. The most significant barriers for innovation in industry are skill shortages, lack of effective collaborations, insufficient capacity building and inability to manage innovation successfully. However, sustainable and accessible mechanisms to address these are virtually non-existent and hence GTU Innovation Council and Techpedia are striving to make it happen within a year of time involving young technology minds and 8000 plus faculties within Single Technical University.

GTU Innovation sankuls are in regular habit of arranging interactions between students-faculties and industry authorities in every week involving local GIDC and other industry persons of particular sector and particular location. GTU Innovation Council has successfully maintained this practice right from the beginning and has significantly progressed in all parts of the state.

The Sectoral council concept has been well appreciated by GCCI, VCCI , ASSOCHAM ,VIA , FGI, SGCCI , REA and other leading industry chambers and industry clusters. Each sectoral council will be linked to particular industry groups falling in that domain under each GIDCs of Gujarat. These Sectoral councils will again follow an user defined innovation model where the inputs, needs and suggestions from MSMEs and review by GTU Profs and students followed by this will create initial ways to start designing of new roadmaps of that particular sector. These Sectoral Innovation councils will involve disciplines from Engineering, Diploma Engineering, Pharmacy and MCA and associated areas.

PTU wish to create a User defined Innovation Ecosystem in Punjab along with the action agenda of Techpedia.in

2011-07-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Response from Industry Associations to support Industry-Academia Linkage under GTU Innovation Council

2011-07-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Co-operation in building a viable and sustainable platform for linking the technological challenges in MSME and informal sector with the creative potential of young technology students and faculty in various engineering institutions/www.techpedia.in

2011-07-07T13:29:00.001-07:00

ORGANISATION OF PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCERS OF INDIA

Peninsula Corporate Park, Peninsula Chambers, Ground Floor, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.

Telephone: 91 + 22 + 2491 8123, 2491 2486, 6662 7007 Fax: 91 + 22 + 2491 5168 Email: indiaoppi@vsnl.com

Ref.Tech-1-2010/110

HEADS OF MEMBER COMPANIES MEMBERS OF THE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE

Dear All,

Subject: Co-operation in building a viable and sustainable platform for linking the technological challenges in MSME and informal sector with the creative potential of young technology students and faculty in various engineering institutions/www.techpedia.in

Enclosed herewith is a copy of the letter dated 9^th April, 2010, from Prof. Anil K. Gupta, IIM, Ahmedabad, regarding the above subject, which is self-explanatory.

As mentioned in the above letter, members are requested to share specific technological problems on which they would like the engineering students to work, either with the intention of keeping the project confidential (only summary will be made public) or making the outcome an open source.

It is also suggested by them that companies may like to sponsor partnerships between grassroots informal and formal sector, as part of their CSR activities, for which the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) will be presenting awards for best partnership and the most outstanding projects pursued through this process.

Kindly send the information directly to Prof. Anil K. Gupta at anilgb1@gmail.com; or Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta at:mahanta.hiranmay@gmail.com

Thanks and regards,

TAPAN RAY

DIRECTOR GENERAL

OPPI,India

ASSOCHAM wish to join hand with Techpedia initiative on technological up-gradation for MSME Sector

2011-07-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

To

        - Managing Committee Members
        - Patron Members
        - Promoter Chambers
        - Corporate Associates
        - Overseas Members
        - Ordinary Members

ASSOCHAM/JJ/MSME/11-12/102

ASSOCHAM–Techpedia initiative on technological up-gradation for MSME Sector

The increasing competitiveness in the market has created a very high need for constant technological upgradation, innovation, energy conservation and other related business process improvement, particularly for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector. It is a known fact that companies operating at small and medium level do not necessarily have adequate R & D facility and, therefore, face immense difficulties in initiating the process of upgrading their technology with a view to improving the business competitiveness.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) Regional Office, Ahmedabad AND Techpedia have joined hands with a view to create viable and vibrant bridge between industries and academia.
We may inform you that Techpedia has brought together over 1 lac projects from 500 colleges persued by 3,50,000 students pertaining to various technological up-gradation with innovative models, which will ultimately help small and medium scale industries. This if suitably adopted by the business units can greatly help to improve the technology, which will ultimately help them in increasing their business competitiveness.
Apart from the application of already available technology, there is a plan to involve students of Engineering Colleges pan India for on the spot assessment of the business process and generate new ideas for industries towards emerging technological challenges. In some cases mentors from the industries may also be engaged as volunteer to guide students.

Therefore, we solicit response from MSME sector units , in the enclosed Response Form to enable us to gauge response on the requirement of technological upgradation.
Please Note we would send further information to those units only who have responded to this request.
Your early response in the matter is eagerly solicited. Request please respond by 31st March, 2011.
Kindly mark your response to :
Shri. Akshay S Sheth
Regional Director
Gujarat Chapter,
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India
4th Floor, Heritage Tower, B/h. Visnagar Bank, Usmanppura,
Ashram Road, AHMEDABAD – 380 014
PH : (079) 2754 1728 – 29, 2754 1876, Fax : 3000 6352
Email : assocham.ahd1@assocham.com
Assocham.ahd3@assocham.com


D.S.Rawat
Secretary General
Encl   : Response Form
-----------------------------------------------------
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India
ASSOCHAM Corporate Office
1, Community Centre, Zamrudpur, Kailash Colony, New Delhi - 110 048
Tel: 011-46550555   •   Fax: 011-46536481 / 82, 46536497 / 98
Website: http://www.assocham.org

Pharma- Industries wish to join hand with Techpedia.in for creating Innovation Ecosystem in the Sector in India

2011-07-07T13:15:00.001-07:00

Dear Prof. Anil K. Gupta ,

We have received your letter date: 2-7-2010, regarding introduction on Techpedia.in. and seeking our cooperation for building a viable and sustainable platform between Industries, Academics and Innovation.

It is our pleasure to be introduced with Techpeida.in, an initiative of SRISTI, and we are very much impressed with the activities of the Techpeida.in.

If we could hold your hands in anyway for the growth of your initiative, that will be our pleasure. We will be very much happy to become a part your initiative. We would like to invite your Tech Team to meet us for further exchange of thoughts. Kindly inform us any suitable timing for that.

Looking forward to your reply

Best Regards

Piyush Palkhiwala
(Chairman & M.D.)

Maps Enzymes Limited
(FORMERLY MAPS (INDIA) LIMITED)

Civil and Environmental Engineering Industries come forward to share their IDPs ( Industry Defined Projects) to young Technical minds via Techpedia.in

2011-07-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

To,

Prof. Anil Gupta,

IIMA

--------

Subject: Cooperation in building a viable and ……………

Reference: Personal meeting with Mr. Malav and his colleague in my office

Dear Sir,

It is indeed a great concept. I congratulate all those who are part and parcel of this project. It will be beneficial to the students and the society as well in the broad spectrum.

I am Chairman of Nishu Group Of Companies which is actively involved in the manufacturing of Building Materials. As basically I am an academician, my approach has always remained like a researcher. After completing my graduation in Mechanical Engineering, I worked as a Professor for 10 years before we switched over to manufacturing activities.

We have invented several products which have got fantastic response in the market. Still there is a room for invention / improvement / research. Therefore, I enclose herewith a possibility on which your team can work and be of help.

Wishing you all the success,

Mr. Sudhir Thaker

CMD

Nishu Group

SMEs and Big industries come forward to take help of young technology minds via GTU Innovation Council being developed by GTU and Techpedia (www.techpedia.in )

2011-07-07T11:52:00.001-07:00

Dear Sir,

It is heartening to note that at Rajkotmore than 30,000 industries are doing a wonderful job. We are part of the Aditya Birla Group, a US $29 billion premium conglomerate. We are leading manufacturer of Caustic Soda, Chlorine & allied products in India. We are putting up a Greenfield Chlor-Alkali Plant. We are in the process of finalizing the prospecting vendor list, who can be our partner in completing the project in most competitive / qualitative & timely manner. We also have the requirement for our existing plant.

Pl. help us to understand how we can be benefited by these workshops by sourcing our various requirement.

Regards,

Rakesh K. Gupta
Manager – Purchase,
Grasim Industries Ltd. – Chemical Division,

"Techies-to-be innovative for rural India " a model well appreciated by eastern world developing countries and extends possible cooperation

2011-07-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Hiranmay

I am currently on a visit from Japan in India and read an article in "The Sunday Express", titled "Techies-to-be innovative for rural India".

I am a director of KKSI based in Tokyo, Japan and responsible for developing energy efficiency/ renewable energy projects for rural poors in developing countries. I read the article in the news paper and wondering if we can cooperate in promoting the technologies posted on your website for Japanese companies. I know a few Japanese
companies including ourself that are interested in developing projects that could help improve life of people in rural India. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us and people who need the technologies if we work together.

I am currently staying in Mumbai and leaving here for Japan tomorrow morning. I will try calling you after I get back to Tokyo to see if we can work out some sort of collaborations.

Best regards,

Hayama Kazuyuki
Director
K.K. Satis Factory International

Medical Technology people appreciates the Effort of GTU Innovation Council at Suart Innovation Sankul which is being developed by GTU and Techpedia

2011-07-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Hiranmay

I was moved and impressed Hiranmay with your approach to the need of the day we have in India.

Please keep up, there is so much our policy maker can do and there is lot we need to do as responsible citizens of the country.

For last twenty + years, I have always looked way and means and acted upon it, so we can minimize import dependency and create and manufacture something here to become self sufficient.

We have contributed heavily in making our diamond industry a glob player in every type of goods processing and in turn lacs of job were created and we now dominates the diamond processing in the global market.

Then I took up to develop our own Indian coronary stent for angioplasty to make our country self-reliant and bring down the cost of angioplasty, we were able to achieve these mighty goals, now India is not just self-reliant in this sector, but we are an exporting country to the countries like all Latin American countries and European countries.

Not only this the cost of angioplasty was Rs. 4 to 5 Lacs, with our initiative it came down to less than one lac rupees.

Now we have embarked upon globalizing our ancient Indian system of medicine ( Ayurveda), we just stared three clinical trials in USA do achieve this goal.

Let us keep in touch, we can complement each other in our goals to help our country’s stride to take big leap to support our growth and make it manufacturing hub for global need with innovation and cost efficiency.

This link may be useful, you may have read this, in case not, this will be a good reading.

http://hir.harvard.edu/global-education/a-disciple-becomes-the-guru?page=0%2C3

With very warm regards

Dhirajlal Kotadia

Sahajanand Medical Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Suggestions from former IIT-Kgp Director to Techpedia.in

2011-07-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Mahanta :

Techpedia is an excellent idea and i will be happy to contribute to its success

My suggestions are :

1. The Abstract should be structured to include: Objective/Mission of the Project ; Output and Outcome

2.Techpedia should be extended to include publicly funded R&D projects from the various GoI agencies. The information should include :Name of the Funding Agency , Name & address of the PI ;funds sanctioned , objectives ;Output ( incl publications and patents) and Outcome.

Analysis of Techpedia data will show that most UG and PG projects are repetitions and are in fact plagiarized.Besides interaction with the industry, Transparency will hopefully will also nurture ethical values among knowledge workers.

KL Chopra

Former Director , IITKGP &

President , SSV

suggestions for imrpoving techpedia.in by kanan, MD Chennai, vortexindia.co.in

2011-07-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

readers are invited to join the debate and add ideas:

Dear folks at Techpedia,

The assembly of students’ projects at one place is truly awesome. My greetings to all who made it possible. It would be much more valuable if visitors to the site could post comments, communicate with those involved in specific projects etc. There is little interactivity, at the moment.

For instance, one could follow NEN’s model to do the following:
· The projects are classified according to some defined subject-domains

· A panel of experts is constituted for each subject domain

· Each project is commented upon and rated by at least three experts

· Judges’ comments are posted alongside the project at the site

· Students / general public are invited to cast votes to select the best in each domain

· A high-profile event is held to honour the awardees

Each project page could be organised the way product-pages are organised in online portals like IPF or Digikey or the way patents are organised and made searchable at Google Patents: essentially, throw up context-sensitive related links, allowing people to drill deeper according to their interests.
· The page should have links to the complete paper, diagrams, photographs

· Should link to individual profiles of author, guide, institution etc. (incl. their contact details, photographs)

· Show links of other projects that the present project refers to, if any

· Should show other projects that belong to related subject

· Show links to other projects guided by the same professor, other projects from the same department, same institution etc.

· Have options to sort search results in different ways – newest first, oldest first, by popularity (number of hits), by expert-ranking, by votes etc.

Of course, an “Advanced Search” option like this is a must-have option.

Wishing you the very best in this pioneering endeavour, and with warm regards,
KANNAN

S. J. Thakkar Pharmacy College files five patents from ten m pharma thesis: a sleeping giant is awakening: congratulations manish

2011-07-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

It is a matter of great pleasure to introduce ourselves as a First self-finance pharmacy college of Saurashtra region offering B. Pharm programm since June-2004, M. Pharm (Pharmacology) since August-2009 and M .Pharm (Q.A.) since August 2010. Our college is approved by AICTE, New Delhi, PCI, New Delhi(U/s 12) and affiliated with Gujarat Technological University (GTU), Ahmedabad. Ours is also an IS0 9001:2008 certified institute for maintaining Total Quality Management (TQM) in the institute.
We have total ten (10) students in our first Batch of M.Pharm (Pharmacology)(2009-2011), who are going to submit their dissertation thesis on 21st June 2011.
I am very happy to inform you that, out of our ten (10) research projects, we have filed five (05) Patents to the Controller of Patents at Mumbai. Brief summary is given in below mentioned table for your reference.
Sr. No
Name of Faculty
(Inventor)
Name of PG student
(Co-inventor)
Title of patent
Month and year of filing
1
Dr. Manish A. Rachchh &
Dr. Rina H. Gokani
Bipin M. Patel
Novel anti-hypertensive herbal composition, method of preparation of the same and use thereof
May 2011
2
Dr. Manish A. Rachchh &
Dr. Rina H. Gokani
Bhavin D. Ramprasadi
Novel anti- alzheimer herbal composition, method of preparation of the same and use thereof
June-2011
Innovation at S. J. Thakkar Pharmacy College, Rajkot
3
Dr. Manish A. Rachchh &
Dr. Rina H. Gokani
Muneshvar B. Meghnathi
Novel anti-diabetic herbal composition, method of preparation of the same and use thereof
June-2011
4
Dr. Rina H. Gokani &
Dr. Manish A. Rachchh
Roochi R. Aghera
Novel anti-obesity herbal composition, method of preparation of the same and use thereof
June-2011
5
Dr. Rina H. Gokani &
Dr. Manish A. Rachchh
Jigar V. Savjiyani
Novel anti-cancer herbal composition, method of preparation of the same and use thereof
June-2011
Thanking you.
Yours sincerely,
-Dr. Manish A. Rachchh
Head (PG) & Principal I/c,
S. J. Thakkar Pharmacy College (Inst code: 264)
RAJKOT-360005
(M) 9428255848 / 9099063164
Email: manishrachh@gmail.com
www.sjtpc.com

if so much can be done by so few, what are we waiting for !!!!!!!

2011-07-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

i just saw the projects done by the students at Canara Engineering College based on Sociotechnical issues posed by All-India Arecanut Growers Association through sristi's www.techpedia.in portal. IF a few students could break the inertia and move towards socially meaningful projects, imagine what will happen when one million students will do it every year, inspite of UGC or AICTE and not because of it.

Successful Projects at Canara Engineering College based on Sociotechnical issues posed by All-India Arecanut Growers Association

2011-07-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

Techpedia.in and GTU developing roarmap of Decade of Innovation involving Young Minds

2011-07-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

Innovation: 1 lakh projects for low-cost solutions!

2011-07-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Anil Gupta

A black box for automobiles, low-cost solar water heater, power generation from biogas using a bike, an improved apparatus for ultrasonography, etc are part of a treasure trove of projects done by students in techpedia.in. Linking young technological minds with unsolved problems of society is our next agenda, says Anil Gupta.

Given the diversity and the plurality of the Indian society, Indian models of innovations cannot but reflect its culture of resistance, redefining the context and rebuilding the connections among different streams of ideas.

Mughal emperor Akbar tried to synthesise the good practices of different religions in what he called as Deen-e-Elahi and he failed. May be, if had tried to nurture the secular institutions of each sacred belief system, he might have succeeded.

While designing models of innovations for distributed knowledge management, the Honey Bee Network has been very conscious of keeping identity of ideators intact. And still, it has tried to forge cooperation and development of value chain around different idea streams.

We have scouted more than 150,000 ideas, innovations and traditional knowledge practices (not all unique or distinctive) from over 500 districts all over the country.

The first 5,000 ideas took Honey Bee Network and SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) about six years.The next 5,000 took another three years.

And then, within the next 10 years, we reached the current number of over 100,000 with the help of various Honey Bee Network collaborators and civil society members and NGIs (non-governmental individuals) through National Innovation Foundation. A new platform, SRISTI has developed through primarily its own resources, techpedia.in.

It has more than 100,000 projects done by 350,000 technology students (mainly final year engineering students) from over 500 institutions including IITs, NITs and many other colleges. This could be done just in about a year.

The contribution of SRISTI team for the purpose led by Hiranmay Mahanta is extraordinary. If one were to search for all the projects of engineering students at Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one would not be able to find.

But in India, disregarding the indifference of the Union ministry of human resource development, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), or the University Grants Commission (UGC), such a platform already exists.

So what does it enable in terms of growth of ideas and innovations which would not have been possible without it? It makes it very difficult for a student to do what has already been done.The innovation quotient thus has gone up and so has the originality quotient.

The search cost for the new students, MSME entrepreneurs, other companies looking for talent, ideas to invest in or join hands with, has gone down enormously.

The real life problems of the informal sector and small entrepreneurs are posted at techpedia.in so that students can take them up for their project work.The long-felt disconnect between the needs of small entrepreneurs and the talent technological students and their guides is being overcome.

The innovations at grassroots level have also been posted under the window of 'innovations waiting to be augmented' for those who wish to add value to existing ideas of farmers, artisans, roadside mechanics or others.

Many techfests at different technology institutions have begun to include such value-addition as one of the contests to gauge groundedness of the Indian genius among the tech-savvy youth.

It is obvious that not many projects will become products in a single cycle of six to nine months. It is here that the kho-kho model has been put forward.

For example, four girls at a Government Women Polytechnic developed a black box for automobile (something that no Indian car has yet, although insurance companies would sure love to have the black box data while settling claims).Another group of students at an engineering college in Nagpur has taken it forward to add value by bringing several new concepts of information processing.

In a few cycles of kho-kho, it is likely to become a product with benefits being shared among all the contributors so that more and more collaborative innovations emerge through this platform.

Not many purveyors/scholars of innovations would have expected original ideas to emerge from polytechnics -- one of the most neglected institutions.

And yet, one finds so many interesting examples of applied technologies whether dealing with RFID, laser, sensor, etc., at such institutions.

New hotbeds of innovations in small towns and small institutions are emerging which planners can continue to neglect because of their myopia.

On laser and sensor applications, one would come across about 1800 projects from all over the country with both or one of these features.

The moment one looks at the name of the colleges which come up, a new breakthrough model of collaboration across time, space, and sectors and social segments starts emerging.

It is this potential which is going to transform Indian story in the coming decades.

The fact that this story is unfolding without help of government or private sector so far shows that when it comes new ideas, the role of SRISTI in spawning new models and platforms such as NIF and Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) will continue to remain pivotal.

However, the full potential of techpedia.in cannot be realized without active involvement and ownership of the platform by the young technology leaders in different technical universities, MSME clusters, and other science and technology institutions.

The future challenges will be shared in the next column. Till then, connect, collaborate and create new solutions through kho-kho and other match making options at techpedia.in.

10 steps to drive the 'Decade of Innovation'

2011-07-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

Anil K Gupta

We must accept that one of the greatest tragedies of modern India is not challenging the youth and other institutions intensively enough, says Anil K Gupta.

If various technical universities continue to take interest as is evident now, it won't be difficult to imagine that such a platform may have more than a million projects and ideas in a few years time.

Gujarat Technical University has decided to set up Navsarjan Sankul (Innovation Clusters) in which different technical institutions have been mapped to different MSME industrial clusters.

It is well known that most jobs are generated by micro-, small- and medium-enterprises (MSMEs) and informal sector. And if their ability to generate jobs has to be sustained and invigorated, then infusion and implosion of innovations is inevitable.

There are several ways in which the innovation eco system can be made vibrant. These alternatives are also challenges.

I hope that young students and cluster coordinators will join hands in creating a new momentum for inclusive growth in this 'Decade of Innovation'.

The only thing that will become casualty is the inertia. Let the sceptics celebrate their inertia, even as the entrepreneurs and young innovators ignite fireflies of creativity as has been attempted by the Honey Bee Network for so long.

The first challenge is to map four aspects of technology in use at MSME clusters and in the neighbouring rural and urban communities.

The first aspect is benchmarking the current level of energy, material and technology youths in the enterprise.

Second, is to identify any innovation that the MSME unit may have tried.

Third is to identify the unsolved problems. And the fourth is to identify the policy bottlenecks which are coming in the way in realizing fully the entrepreneurial potential.

GTU has provided three credits for identifying the problem at the end of the third year and four credits for solving it in the fourth year by every student.

Different universities can develop different models. Punjab Technical University has not only found the idea worthwhile but also has offered to put some scholarships for outstanding projects besides awards for the successful completions.

Rajasthan Technical University has also shown interest in taking the model forward in their own way.

Several other states are testing the idea and hopefully will join hands. It is expected that Ministry of Science and Technology and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises may also find this platform worthy of joining hands in due course.

In any case, the clusters have to have the hunger to engage with young minds in technology institutions.

The second challenge is to identify the existing projects which as such or by pooling several projects can solve the existing problem.

Since the academic-industrial linkage has not been very vibrant in most states, this identification will not happen automatically. Workshops will have to be organised in each cluster to facilitate such identification.

The third challenge is to identify mentors for specific individual, pooled or kho-kho, ie, relay projects.

GTU has already identified about 100 PhD holding faculty members who may volunteer for the purpose. In addition, they will also help in meeting the next challenge.

The fourth challenge is to review existing projects along different verticals such as solar-thermal, solar-photovoltaic, hybrid solar, solar-wind, etc.

These reviews will reveal the strengths, weaknesses, gaps and also the potential for pooling different ideas within a vertical or across domain specific verticals for exploiting full potential.

The fifth challenge is to motivate students to take up the unsolved problems of MSME but also informal sector.

For instance, development of devices for manual paddy transplantation or picking tea leaves so as to reduce the drudgery, improve the efficiency and thus the wages of millions of women who do this in a painstaking manner.

The sixth challenge is to facilitate conversion of ideas and innovations into enterprises either through open innovation model or through IP protection.

The funds for both the purposes are scanty if at all. One can easily aim at least 2000 patents from each technical university every year.

That will transform the stagnancy and sluggishness in the patent filing rates of Indians in India.

One should think of either a utility patent system similar to Australian model or what we have called INSTAR. The idea is to provide quick registration, short term protection, maximum five claims and low fees.

If NIF can file several hundred patents for school or college dropouts with very limited resources, there is no reason why technology students cannot do it.

It is true that most of them lose interest in their projects after passing out.But, the society has to have interest in their projects.

The seventh challenge is to get ready for India to become crucible of creativity for the whole world.

Unlike the low tech IT outsourcing business, in future platform like techpedia.in would enable high tech outsourcing with the distributed management of knowledge and ideas with high degree of redundancy.

Imagine the cost of assigning same problem or different modules of same problem to hundreds and thousands of students.

The competition and collaboration among the students will generate not only new solutions but many more new heuristics which will spawn further ideas and innovations.

This model of collaborative and competitive problem solving will achieve results at an extremely low cost which is unimaginable in the current costing structure.

The frugal, affordable, accessible and accountable innovations will emerge from the mind fields of technical universities, colleges and labs in small towns as well as bigger metros.

The eighth challenge is to forge close partnership between tens of thousands of innovations and traditional knowledge practices in the NIF/Honey Bee database and the technological youth.

By offering attractive awards, prizes, risk capital, stakes and other incentives, the whole eco-system can be made vibrant and at the same time joyfully collegial and inclusive.

The ninth challenge is to link the strategic sectors of Indian economy with this platform and challenge the youth to submit synopsis for breakthrough ideas and innovations.

With planned failure of 90 per cent, the success of the remaining will inevitably follow.

We must accept that one of the greatest tragedies of modern India is not challenging the youth and other institutions intensively enough.

The rhetoric of India being a young country with practically no engagement of the policy makers with the technology and management youth shows the farce of the current polity.

The tenth challenge is to develop both empathetic and inverted innovation model. The first implies developing solutions by internalising the pain of others as one's own, as reflected in the eternal ethos of our society viz., samvedana.

The second implies a case where school children will ideate, college students will fabricate and the entrepreneurs and companies will commercialise or diffuse solutions socially as open source.

This is an inverted innovation model which has already been operationalised by NIF through IGNITE competitions.

Indian innovation eco-system is waiting to move vigorously, a small nudge here and a small prick there will make elephants dance and donkeys give way.

GESIA to train IT entrepreneurs via GTU

2011-07-06T12:37:00.001-07:00

Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association (GESIA) has tied-up with Gujarat Technological University (GTU) to provide guidance on developing innovations with an aim to bridge the gap between demand and supply of trained human resources in the IT industry, said a report in the Times of India.

GTU will set up 25 innovation centres in every district of Gujarat to provide a platform for its students to interact with industry. GESIA will aim to provide faculty and students guidance on innovation technologies.

Jaimin Shah, GESIA president said that their information and communication technology (ICT) professionals will provide expert guidance on innovations and project training. They will also arrange for lectures by successful IT entrepreneurs in order to create more IT ventures out of colleges.

A seminar on 'Emerging Technologies, Trends and Opportunities for ICT Industry' focussing on opportunities in cloud computing, e-governance, mobile technology and innovation was held on the occasion of 4th annual GESIA awards, said the report.

Rajiv Vaishnav, vice president, NASSCOM said that Ahmedabad had the potential to be an attractive IT/BPO destination. Talent, robust infrastructure and ability to deliver at a lower cost had helped the ICT industry sustain itself and inclusive growth and effective governance had helped it achieve milestones.

GTU ties up with architects

2011-07-06T12:36:00.001-07:00

The Gujarat Technological University (GTU) has tied up with Gujarat Institute of Civil Engineers and Architects (GICEA) in an effort to provide a platform for its professors to share ideas with professionals.The move, according to GTU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Akshai Aggarwal, is necessary at preventing a recurrence of the mid -1980s to mid-1990s crisis.
Technical colleges were then reducing civil engineering seats as the demand for these were not too high. But when infrastructural growth picked up pace the following decade, a shortage was felt in the market. This was further accentuated in the education system because the few civil engineers who had passed out by then were less eager to teach in colleges.
The demand for civil engineering courses has picked up in the last few years. GTU colleges have seen an intake of about 1,000 students three years ago, a number that has increased to roughly 4,900 - an almost three-fold increase.
Office bearers and other senior members of GICEA held a meeting with GTU officials a week ago where it was decided that GICEA members (there are about 5,000 across Gujarat) will be attached to GTU’s college clusters.
Twenty-five of these college clusters - called Navsarjan Sankuls - have been formed across the state, mainly keeping in mind the industrial estates that are geographically located near the colleges. Chemical engineering colleges will tie up with chemical industry clusters, mechanical with automobile and so on.
But this had essentially left out the civil engineering and software and computer industry as companies under these are spread out and usually not concentrated in industrial estates as such. GTU had earlier tied up with the Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association (GESIA).In last week’s meeting, GICEA offered to profile labs for material testing and other state-of-the-art facilities available at their premises, the minutes of the meeting reveal. A framework is currently being worked out.

Techpedia: A new smart way to connect academia & industry

2011-07-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

Brilliant research projects by students of technical institutes across the country would now be able to serve the needs of small and medium scale industries rather than collecting dust in store rooms.

Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta's brainchild 'Techpedia.in' is a unique website created to connect large amount of research work done at the undergraduate level in technical institutes to the industries concerned.

The projects, the database of which would be posted on the website, will benefit medium and small scale industries that cannot afford to have their own research and development facility.

"The fate of the well thought and hard-worked projects of the final year undergraduates is unknown, as scores of batches pass out through more than 3,000 technical institutes of the country," Gupta told PTI explaining why he took up the initiative.

"If at least one per cent out of the 100,000 projects, that are published each year, have the brilliance along with the potential to be developed into a product, it would hugely benefit the micro, small and medium enterprises, along with the major players in the field of manufacturing and services," he said.

"Along with serving the needs of industry, it would also help in bridging the existing gap between industry and academia, at the same time acting as a huge technical database which the students, faculties, and researchers alike could refer to," Gupta said.

The website has recorded 1,40,000 projects in the first year after its inception creating a huge database for the projects undertaken by students during their graduation, which so far remained unrecorded.

The initiative was taken up by Gupta-promoted NGO Sristi. "Actually this is the work of government or University Grants Commission, but as they have not done it we have to take it up," Gupta said.

"After procuring all the technical database of Gujarat based colleges, centres were set up at Nagpur, Pune, Rourkela, Banaras and Chennai with the mobilisation of numerous volunteers to amass projects and theses reports from Indian Institutes of Technology, NITs and other technical colleges of national repute in the first phase," Hiranmay Mahanta of Sristi, who is looking after the project, said.

"Within six months, more than 1,20,000 projects were procured from more than 500 colleges," he said. Mahanta said the results are encouraging as many industries have shown interest in projects posted on the website.

Gujarat-based Argusoft has shown strong interest in some projects based on voice over internet protocol Technology listed on the website, Mahanta said.

Another company Strapping Solutions is keen about developing projects in packaging industry, he said.

"Techpedia is developing its own patent activation cell to cater to the need of technical students and faculties, which is likely to make aware young people of their intellectual knowledge preservation rights at very young stage," Mahanta said.

"This platform will benefit the industry as well as students, as the research and development costs for developing new products, designs and finding solutions for the technical and design related problems are very high and unaffordable for most of the MSMEs," he said.

"The national portal may provide a cost effective tool to the industry for finding solutions for their technical problems by harnessing the creative talent of students and faculty in technical institutions and making use of their infrastructure," Mahanta further said.

"For students, the portal would help them and their guides in selection of projects from the list of the problems and issues being faced by the industry.

"The students may also get funding from the industry for working on the projects in which it is interested," he said.

Students cover four more dists as part of industrial Shodh Yatra

2011-07-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

GTU students looked into problems relating to environment, health, machinery, energy and solid waste disposal of the industries in Gandhinagar, Kalol, Rajkot and Morbi

Students got to learn practical problems faced by the industries

Continuing their exercise to facilitate better understanding for the students and faculties to get insight of real floor issues of MSMEs (Micro Small Medium Enterprises), students of Gujarat Technological University on Tuesday went to GIDC clusters in Gandhinagar, Kalol, Rajkot and Morbi.

Fifteen days ago, they had taken their Shodh Yatras to Naroda, last week it was Vatva. The students and professors are both focusing on developing innovation products as well as processes for the industries after interacting with them. GTU students will convert these industry-defined projects as their final year thesis work to deliver effective solutions and empower the MSMEs.

The students met the industry people and understood their problems relating to environment, health, machinery, energy and solid waste disposal. These were documented. Documenting of the problems faced by the industries across the state is under way. This will continue till April end. From May to July, the students and faculty will analyse the problems and then come up with solutions.

GTU Vice Chancellor Akshai Agarwal said, “Big industries have their own R&D that provides them solutions to their problems. However, small industries don’t have the manpower or the expertise to improve on their machinery or product as they concentrate on recovering their production costs. Even if one per cent of research projects based on industry needs turn out to be a success, then GTU students would have delivered quite a few innovative solutions to MSMEs of the country.”

Students also get to learn the practical problems faced by the industries, their research now is based on demand, said Agarwal. Earlier, they did research, but it did not take into account the needs of the industry, he said.

Hiranmay Mahanta, managing director of Techpedia, said, “Students and faculty are involved in solving the problems of the industries, locally. Through Techpedia we take it online to the world. Suggestions and solutions from

experts across the world will help better the product. Through this we intend to bridge the communication gap between the researcher and the industry.”

Techies-to-be innovate for rural India

2011-07-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

Last month, at the IIT-Bombay techfest, Utkarsh, the winners were local, rural and low-cost technologies: Parvin Kumar and Abhishek Ranjan won Rs 50,000 for designing a Rs 32,000 bio-fuel machine that can produce enough gas to cook three meals a day for a family of six. The judges at the festival, which had roped in support from the Ministry of Rural Development, recommended they file for a patent. Runner-ups included small-scale power generation devices and water purifiers for villages.

Annual technology festivals across the country are increasingly incorporating competitions where students compete to build machines that address rural and social needs. These are termed “frugal innovations”—low-cost machinery or devices that address the needs of local people, to help them earn more or solve local problems like water scarcity, transportation of goods and so on. The scale is immense: every year, an estimated Rs 450 crore is raised and spent by students to organise these techfests, where on average students from as many as 50 to 100 colleges take part. Among the major ones taking part are the IITs—Kharagpur, Bombay and Powai—and the NITs at Rourkela, Durgapur and Surat, besides VNIT Nagpur, and TKM College of Engineering in Kollam, Kerala.

The “My Innovation” competition at the recent IIT-Kharagpur’s techfest Kshitij had a poster that listed six common rural problems ranging from energy poverty in villages to water scarcity and transportation issues to shelter requirements. The challenge was to build solutions for them. Entries were judged on parameters like necessity of the technology, the size of the rural population that could be impacted, and cost.

Participants Spandan Dey of MIT Bishnupur and Shiv Kumar Agarwal of Jadavpur University built a Rs 10,000 baby-incubator to rival the over-Rs 1 lakh incubators used in hospitals. The problem they identified was this: “Of the 27 million babies born in India each year, a million or so die in the first four weeks, accounting for nearly 25 per cent of the total 3.9 million neonatal deaths worldwide.”

At Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT), Surat, the annual fest is concentrating for the third time on “low cost innovations that could replace existing, expensive technology,” said coordinator Bhavik Gattani. In Kerala, students of TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, are busy preparing for their annual fest CONJURA 2011, where the main theme is “Engineering Innovations: Empowering rural India.”

Anil K Gupta, senior professor at the Indian Institute of Management—Ahmedabad, who has received at least a dozen invitations to attend such projects due to his work in rural and grassroots technologies, says while the momentum of innovations for rural India is picking up, there is a lot to be done. Gupta says there has been little interest from outside the student community and even among student innovations, many don’t take off for want of further research and development, the cumbersome procedure for patenting and eventually, marketing.

A non-profit collective managed by Professor Gupta—www.techpedia.in—has been scouring for these innovations and trying to rope in more college techfests to hold competitions along the same lines. Hiranmay Mahanta, who heads the collective, says there is reason to cheer. “From Kerala to Kanpur, Durgapur to Gandhinagar. teams of five from 100 colleges means 500 students will be cracking several issues in a single event. Multiply this by 20 events,” he says. Adam Halliday

The workshop of the world

2011-07-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Their clients include Fortune 500 companies and their annual turnover runs into crores. They manufacture anything: from machine tools to submersibles to automobile parts to ceramics.
We are not talking about any any industrial giant but one giant industrial area that has over 30,463 small-scale industries owned not by any techie but by ordinary graduates and run and operated by ITI passouts, school dropouts and even MGNREGA card-holders.

We are talking about the Rajkot district industrial area in Gujarat.
The sheer industrial prowess of the district is one reason why the country’s largest online portal for engineering students, www.techpedia.in, has moved beyond the virtual world to set up its first nodal centre in the middle of what its young MD called “the workshop of the world”.
The portal is run by a small team of new engineers and the idea was mooted by IIM-Ahmedabad professor Anil K Gupta.

The idea is to try and introduce the district’s 30,463 industries (according to official estimates) to the world through the Internet, and link them to India’s several thousand engineering colleges to help them solve their technical deficiencies.

THE RISE

Rajkot district’s rise began in the 1940s when a British company called Lister and Peter introduced a diesel-engine water pump in the then largely agricultural area.

“People took the engines apart, studied them and made duplicates. That’s the genesis of Rajkot’s industries,” said Naresh Patel, former president of the Rajkot Engineering Association.

Eventually, the reverse engineers began to slowly branch out to other things — machine tools, submersibles, automobile parts, ceramics, plastics and, recently, even renewable energy.
The bigger ancillary units have direct contact with major manufacturers, and the client list is impressive: Ford, General Motors, Siemens, Crompton Greaves, John Deere, Jaguar, Tata, Ashok Leyland and other less-known companies located in countries stretching from Japan to Germany to both North and South America.

Many smaller set-ups that serve as ancillary units are more or less housed in 12feet x 20feet cubby holes tucked away in sprawling zones within and outside the district capital.

Often, they operate solely on cellphones and sometimes fax. Cycle carts and pushcarts are parked along the narrow lanes of these clusters, ready to transport the products. Trucks are unlikely to fit in the lanes anyway.

Balaji Marines, for example, deals solely with pistons — big and small — and operates from a workshop the size of small bedroom, with several machines crowded in.
Says the man in charge of the unit, Kirit B Prajapati, holding out the pistons: “These are from China, this is from Honda. This, I think, is from Italy, maybe London.”

Prajapati and his workers make duplicates of these pistons, taking care to be as precise in sizes up to 0.002 millimeters. They then put them on cycle-carts and send them to other bigger units located somewhere in Rajkot.

Where do they go from there?

“We have no idea. We just get the samples and make them. The largest piston we ever made weighed 90 kg,” he said.

Behind him, a man in rubber slippers cuts a small cylindrical pipe the size of a child’s finger neatly along the middle with a hacksaw. Without stopping his work, he grunted, “Woh bahut badda hain (this is too big)”.

Barely a few meters away, an even smaller workshop is occupied by two clanging, grinding machines manned by school dropouts. A board above the workshop’s shutters declares it as “Amardeep Grinders”.

Here, 19-year-old Ashok Makwan stands for 12 hours a day and gives shapes to submersible rotors.

His job is to make sure the cylindrical rotors are perfectly round, otherwise there may be vibration and would result in a shorter life span of the submersible pump they are fitted to.

“It takes 10 minutes for one rotor to be shaped perfectly,” he explains. Ashok finishes about 125 such rotors in a normal working day. Above him is a small room, hardly the size of a mid-sized elevator, where the company’s accounts are kept, in other words, the office. No computer, just a stack of files.

Amardeep Grinders is barely a decade old, but has an annual turnover of about Rs 1.29 crore just shaping submersible rotors.

It’s co-owner Bharat Thumar, a Hindi graduate in his thirties, works at a government school near Rajkot.

It being a Sunday, he was in his second workshop, perhaps five times the size of the other one (but without a computer either), marvelling at the newest tool in his factory — a fully automated CNC machine he recently bought for Rs 1.82 lakh.

HELP AT HAND

Thumar listened patiently as a young Techpedia scout, Utkarsh Mehta, explained about the portal, emphasising there are lakhs of students raring to help develop any solution to any problem he might have as an industrialist.

Mehta mentioned a concept of a black box for cars developed by a polytechnic student who uploaded it on techpedia.in.

Volkswagen had shown interest in that project and is currently in talks with the brains behind the idea, four students of Government Residential Women’s Polytechnic in Latur, Maharashtra.

After a while, Thumar pointed to his new machine and said, “It runs on sensors, and when one part stops working, it shuts down so we can repair it. That slows down the work. I wonder if anyone has come up a device that will tell me beforehand if a part of the machine is likely to stop working. That will save me a lot of time.”

Such industry defined problems, or IDPs, are exactly what Techpedia is trying to locate from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the country, and is starting with Rajkot.

The idea is that the problems would be put on the portal, and a student from anywhere could come up with a solution, and then directly contact the industry concerned to work on it.
And there has been positive response from certain quarters.

It was a rainy Wednesday in late July when Techpedia organised a seminar at Ramkrishna Mission’s auditorium in Rajkot. Over 600 delegates turned up to hear Professor Gupta and Professor Sanjay Verma (who teaches Computer and Information Systems at IIM-A) talk about the concept behind Techpedia.

GROUSE

There are apparent reasons why industries in the area are curious and open to Techpedia, says Naresh Patel, former REA president.

Patel did not hesitate once when he said industry associations such as the Confederation of Indian Industries, of which he is a member, does practically nothing for SMEs.

“They only work for the big industries. They don’t work for SMEs,” he said.

At the trust-run Knowledge Gurukul Institute of Business Management on the outskirts of Rajkot, a group of managers from factories at the Metoda GIDC, who had assembled together to talk about their experiences and how Rajkot evolved, shared Patel’s sentiments, albeit less forcefully.
“Such big associations work slowly”, “language is a barrier because most of the small entrepreneurs here speak only Gujarati” and “the big associations depend on funds, and the big industries contribute a lot so naturally SMEs are left behind”, were some of the sentiments shared.

But the history of the area’s industries as told through the group of gentlemen was far more interesting. In the beginning, industries here simply made products and sent them to Mumbai, where exporters sent them overseas.

But when the customers started asking for improvements in the products, the exporters could not do so and direct contact between the industries and the customers slowly evolved.

Of course, it helped that ports began coming up in the Saurashtra region and electricity supply stabled. (The industries in Rajkot are open on Sundays and remain closed on Wednesdays, instead because of load-shedding. In the area, each district has a day in a week when there is load-shedding.)

But isn’t the tariff, at Rs 6 per unit for industrial use, a little high? “It’s expensive, but it’s available,” was the quick reply.

And how could a portal that is populated by engineering students who have little to zero industry experience possibly contribute to such a vibrant industrial area?

In his office at the GIDC, Jayant Jamuar, technical director of Kadvani Forge Limited and vice-chairman of the ASM International India Council, had a ready answer.

He held up a spiral-bound, mechanical engineering student’s thesis on a robotic arm specially made for use in the forging process, something Jamuar said he had always been interested in to use in his company that has an annual turnover of about Rs 75 crore. He had received the thesis from an engineering professor friend of his, he said, who also happened to be student’s guide. “Most of the industries here are involved in metallurgy and forging. But there’s no institute in the area that teaches material science, so we have to import skilled workers, and ideas, like these,” Jamuar said.

Other SMEs have been even quicker to trust students’ expertise.

Rigal Ghetia, co-owner of Sunshine Energy, for example, has already sent Techpedia eight IDPs.

His company, working in the solar power sector, was set up five years ago with a capital of Rs 25 lakh. Now, it has an annual turnover of about Rs 1.5 crore and a profit margin of 15-20 percent, employing 12 semi-skilled workers.

The company’s workshop is located about 30 kilometers from Rajkot, on way to Gondal. Here, basic welding and grinding tools are operated by hand to make solar water heaters and solar PV street-lamps.

One of the best-sellers is the solar water heater, fitted with tanks ranging anywhere from 200 litres to 3000 litres; Rigal has sold about 65 such heaters. One such 3000-litre tank has been installed on the roof of the Sri Swaminarayan Gurukul’s student hostel at Gondal.

Warden Ashish Sorathiya said the hostel needed two truck-loads of wood to take care of the heating needs of the 580 students during winters, costing the school Rs 60,000 annually. The solar-water heater has helped to cut down expenses.

But Rigal is still unsatisfied about some of his products’ features, particularly the PV lamps, and is waiting for replies to his IDPs. On the way back from Gondal, one can see cars in the foreign and Indian vehicle showrooms lined on both sides of the road just outside Rajkot.

Most of their parts or sub-parts were probably manufactured a few kilometres away, in the factories stretching for several kilometres down the highway, factories that sourced their material from the cubby-hole workshops in and around the city, manned by ITI passouts and school dropouts who came to work in Rajkot from all over India.

So whatever happened to the Lister and Peter diesel engine, the genesis of this industrial boom town?

There are a number of companies who still export their own versions of the diesel engine, said Prashant Parsana of Prashant Castings Private Limited, which makes and exports castings for submersible pumps.

“It’s quite amazing, but the design of the diesel engine that was imported, reverse engineered and is now exported, is exactly the same as the original,” he said.

Budding techies’ innovations to get recognition

2011-07-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Techpedia and GTU initiate ‘Awards for Gandhian Engineering’ for innovations at academy level that will benefit the masses.

The categories for the awards have been instituted after the 32 engineering disciplines offered at Gujarat Technological University

In an attempt to promote the concept of Gandhian engineering at university level in the state, Techpedia.in, in association with Gujarat Technological University (GTU), has initiated one of its kind of award to honour the best cost effective innovations at academic level that could benefit the masses.

As the first step towards recognising budding techies’ endeavour, GTU has opened nominations for ‘awards for the best work’ during the last five years by students and faculty members.

The categories for the awards have been instituted after the 32 engineering disciplines offered at GTU. Two awards will be given in each category of under-graduate, post-graduate and diploma courses. The awards will be presented during a ceremony in February next year.

“Through small-scale experiment with techpedia.in, GTU’s under-graduates have proved that they can innovate in an incredible way. We need to motivate them in order to foster an innovative eco-system for entrepreneurship modules in the society,” said Techpedia.in Managing Director Hiranmay Mahanta. Techpedia.in is a flagship portal of NGO Sristi.

50,000 projects every year
About 50,000 engineering students from 500 colleges come up with their innovative works every year.

“In GTU, some 50,000 students under the guidance of 10,000 faculty members carry out their projects every year. If only 1 per cent of these ideas get converted into viable, market-driven products in areas like automation, clean technologies, healthcare, telecom, IT applications and environments, it can produce hundreds of industry and society-friendly solutions,” said Mahanta.

The initiative will play a vital role as it will provide a platform for dialogue and discourse on innovation at university level, he added.

Eligibility for the Awards

1. Faculty members and students of engineering colleges and polytechnics

2. Post-graduate, under-graduate and diploma engineering students

3. Projects completed during the last five academic years

* Last date of application for the award is January 5, 2011

Objective of the award
The award will encourage and support students and faculty to design cost-effective and eco-friendly products and services for the larger section of society. The innovators will be motivated to put their efforts together in socialising technologies.

Another objective of this award is to emphasise on solving real-life problems of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) which cannot afford their own research and development and value addition to innovations at grass roots.

“A lot of grassroots innovations have taken place in Gujarat but haven’t got recognition in the absence of a proper platform. The award has been set up to nurture the talent. The idea is to encourage the young minds adopt ‘socialising technologies’ to cater to the need of society in the 21st century,” GTU Vice Chancellor Akshai Aggarwal said.

Through small-scale experiment with
techpedia.in, GTU’s under-graduates have proved that they can innovate in an
incredible way. We need to motivate them in order to foster an innovative eco-system for entrepreneurship modules
in society

– Hiranmay Mahanta, Managing Director, Techpedia.in

NIT to modify curriculum to let students take on industry projects

2011-07-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) has recently passed a resolution to change their curriculum to allow students to work on real and current requirements of industries for their academic projects.

At a meeting of NIT deans at the Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT) in Surat on April 3, an understanding was reached wherein each NIT would approach their respective senates to bring this change.

Dean of Research and Consultancy at SVNIT P L Patel said the curriculum change would most likely be effective from next academic year 2011-2012, if not earlier.

“Two things were discussed in Surat, first was that all our final year, M Tech and PhD students’ projects should be uploaded on www.techpedia.in, which is a student-initiated database of more than one lakh projects,”

Patel said.
“Another discussion was about uploading our students’ projects and profiles on NIT websites, so that companies can pick what they need and work with our students.”
Patel added the two discussions were “not 100 per cent” imminent, as the senates of each of the 30-or-so NITs would have to take it forward since it involves curriculum change, and they are autonomous bodies.

Sources said www.techpedia.in is operated by SVNIT students (mentored by IIMA’s Professor Anil K Gupta) who have been collecting projects of final year engineering students from across the country for about a year.

Hiranmay Mahanta of Techpedia said SVNIT faculty and the Techpedia team would soon meet officials from the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) to discuss the issue of providing Industry Defined Projects (IDP).

Engg students lend helping hand to rural communities

2011-07-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

Even though only a few days are left for examinations to begin, students of LD Engineering College are busier than usual this time. Take the case of sixth semester students Vivek Chondagar and Anupam Mishra. Their hectic schedule can't be attributed to the preparation for exams, but to their project - a tea leaf plucking machine that they have designed - which is getting its final touches.

The project aims to boost the efficiency of the tea plucking labourers of Assam. The duo had taken it up to fulfill their personal goal, which was to address issues faced by the rural communities in different parts of the country.

“Gandhian Engineering is not just for the poor”

2011-07-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

VNIT welcomes Techpedia

2011-07-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

There are many technology students who spend at least six months in their final year for doing a project. And yet, nobody knows the fate of these projects.

There is no requirement from UGC or AICTE that every student put at least summary of their project on a national portal (some day It will become obligatory for every student).

Neither the problems of small and tiny industries are posed to the students nor the good projects of the students used by the industries. The grassroots innovations already developed in the informal sector also do not get an opportunity for being valorized by these students.

By creating a techpedia, we will thus solve several problems and also identify the centres of excellence among thousands of B or C level technology institutions [apart from similar hotspots in “A” Class institutions]. Ranking by the peers and by the experts will also generate

information about places where inspired teachers have guided innovative projects.

This is a VNIT Nagpur's initiative for Techpedia.

Techpedia on VNIT site

Indian Decade of Innovation

2011-07-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

GTU students to help tribals of state with their innovations

2011-07-05T13:47:00.001-07:00

Students of Gujarat Technological University (GTU) will help Gujarat's tribal people enhance their skills and increase their knowledge pool.

During the recently concluded 'Shodh Yatra', students from engineering, management, pharmacy and polytechnic background took up the responsibility to help the locals of Panchmahals, Dangs, and Kutch region. According to vice-chancellor Akshai Aggarwal, GTU, one college from Dang district and four colleges from Panchmahals will serve the tribals and resolve their local problems.

"Students will work on projects such as solar powered lanterns in remote villages, multi storage water harvesting and extraction of oil from seeds with the help of machines," said Hiranmay Mahanta, MD of Techpedia.in, who is actively supporting GTU's initiative.

The university recently formed an innovation council, which works with 20 Sankuls to promote industry-college innovations. In the first phase, 2.5 lakh students from different disciplines will be involved which will directly affect 34,500 micro industries and help the workers cope up with their problems. There are 37,000 engineering students, 6,800 B Pharma students, 12,000 management students and 4,900 MCA students participating in the initiative across the state.

During the first visit to the industries, the students learnt about the problems faced in running the organisation. And in the second step the student from 495 colleges under GTU will have to submit a report on it. Once the students are aware of the problems, they will work towards the solutions and accordingly innovate methods for bettering the condition. The highlight of the 'Shodh Yatra' is the social connect of these students with the ethnic communities of the Dangs, Panchmahals and Kutch region.

"Apart from industries, students have identified many other areas where they can use their knowledge in improving the lives of the tribal communities," Aggarwal said. During the shodh yatra, students found that there is an urgent need to have machines for extracting oil and seeds from herbs and medicinal plants. Students also identified the need to develop a machine to extract 'Charoli' seed and oil from its fruit.

Other projects include layered water harvesting in Panchmahals district and solar powered lanterns for remote areas of Kutch. "Students will innovate the machines and make it available to the tribals. We are also planning to consider patterns and seek for financial help from business houses and capital venture providers," added Aggarwal. "Technology has done very little for the society; we can not turn a deaf ear to the problems of the common man living in remote areas," stated Aggarwal.

GTU shifts focus, ties up with National Innovation Foundation

2011-07-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Need of Innovations in Socializing Science and Technologies in Indian Context

2011-07-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

An Effort by Techpedia.in and GTU (Gujarat Technological University) Innovation Council

India had missed the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century and early part of twentieth century. Our industries and largely our society had not benefited from research at Universities and colleges and the two have not yet been come together in any meaningful way. We have not explored all possible opportunities to improve access, affordability, sustainability, efficiency, productivity and competitiveness in the needy domain of socio-technical applications and key focus on bottom of the pyramid of society.The penetration of scientific and technical mindset have stressed on 'Value for Money' but in other side we have neglected equally to emphasize on 'Value for many' .The socio-technical problems of 50 most backward districts of our country had never been posed to the millions of our young science and technical students with the hope that the problems that have remained unsolved for centuries could be cracked. Hence there is a need of an innovative ecosystem pertaining to both product and process innovations and key emphasize on improving the quotient of socializing technologies.Our young science & Technology students must aim in Benchmarking, certification, codification and replication for creating market and learning opportunities at very bottom level of society too. The students and faculties have to be encouraged and supported to design and development of products and services with more performance, from less material, less cost, less time, less environmental pollution and for the benefit of the four billion people, whose income levels are even less than two dollars a day.The concept of Gandhian Engineering & sciences /Frugal Engineering & sciences and innovation for " Creating more from less for More and More" could be insisted to focus on socio-technical needs of the country.

GTU and Techpedia (http://www.techpedia.in have created 25 GTU Innovation Sankuls in Gujarat , which will cut through the inertia of non-contact and will develop a new model of Industry-Institute Collaboration, based on innovation at the grass roots level. When in three years, every one of its more than 100,000 final year students and more than 20,000 faculty members are out in the field with the requirement that an innovative Final Year project is to be completed and put on the Techpedia, when there will be no way to hide the work, when good work will be awarded year after year and when thousands of small and big industries get the opportunity of thinking, jointly with young minds and faculty members about continuous improvements in their products& processes and when the law students work to make patent process and IPR processes easy, an entirely new environment of innovations will be created.

To establish a close and continuing inter-action between the industry and total student population of 250,000 in all the undergraduate and postgraduate courses like Engineering, Management, pharmacy, MCA and Polytechnics and 10,000 plus faculties in GTU, Techpedia and GTU have designed a joint action plan for creation- of 25 Innovation Sankul in Gujarat. (166 industry clusters+ 500 colleges of GTU will be divided into 25 innovation clusters of GTU Colleges and industries, called Innovation Sankuls)The capacity of each Sankul will be built by involving faculty members, professionals, students and owners & professionals of industries. Each Sankul will be encouraged to develop a methodology of working, which inculcates innovation through joint working. At the end of every year, the working will be modulated after a review of the work during the year. This will lead to a cycle of capacity building and renewal during the year. During the summer, thousands of students and faculty members will work jointly with industries to determine the Industry Defined Problems (IDP). These may relate to improving the quality of the products. Or these may be for solving some problems, relating to the processes at the industries. At the beginning of the academic year, the output from the students will be evaluated and it will be uploaded on the Techpedia, the national knowledge portal.

We strongly believe that the entire innovation council can harness the optimum efficiency by your dedicated and lead role in managing this huge knowledge ecosystem.

GTU reveals generous credits for engg projects

2011-07-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

While Gujarat Technological University (GTU) has made scouting and addressing industry-related problems compulsory for the engineering students in their 7{+t}{+h} and 8{+t}{+h} semesters from this year, it announced credits for these projects recently.

The engineering students in the 7th semester will get four credits worth 150 marks for scouting industry-related issues and taking it up as a project.

As these students move to the 8th semester, the continuation of their projects from the 7th semester will be worth eight to 12 credits totaling 400 marks in the 8th semester depending upon the branch of their specialization.

Introduction to Techpedia

2011-07-05T12:09:00.001-07:00

Integrating Minds, Socialising Technologies @ Techpedia.in

2011-07-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

Jamnagar brass-parts units to get technical support from GTU

2011-07-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

In a bid to assist small and medium enterprises of brass-components makers in Jamnagar, the Gujarat Technological University (GTU) and the local industry body, Jamnagar Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) have come forward to resolve challenges faced by the industry.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) in this regard has already been signed with the GTU and first batch of students from the university is expected to visit Jamnagar in July. The joint initiative is aimed at improving productivity and bringing process innovation for the brass-parts industry.

GTU Innovation Council - a joint venture between Gujarat Technological University and Ahmedabad-based Techpedia will establish close linkages with industries and businesses. This will also make research and development at the university more relevant to the needs of industries at national and international levels. The initiative will involve students to provide technical assistance for quality and innovation in the brass-components manufacturing.

"There are several challenges for the brass-parts industry in Jamnagar, mainly on the production front. The market is very large and still most of the units operate manually with nearly 400,000 people depending on brass-components manufacturing. We need to be more professional and competitive in the international market," said Prashant Maharshi, an industry expert and a former office bearer at JCCI.

Techpedia and GTU will set up an innovation sankul (cluster) in Jamnagar focusing on the innovations for the brass-parts manufacturing activity. "Students from different departments from GTU will visit the SMEs in Jamnagar and will identify the problems faced by them. The students will come out with ideas to resolve these problems. A prototype of these ideas may be created and will also be protected by the intellectual property right for the student," said Hiranmay Mahanta from Techpedia, an organisation led by Anil Gupta, a senior professor of Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

Nearly 5,000 units of brass-components manufacturers will benefit from the academic participation. The brass-components are mainly used in all the electronic and industrial components.

Mahanta further informed that the step would create a management system using the existing structures and facilities. The initiative is a part of the GTU Innovation Council's programme to involve students to prepare a report on the challenges faced by the industry and come out with a scientific solution.

Kho-kho model of innovation: techpedia.in

2011-07-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

A website of tech ideas whose time has come promotes collaborative research

Given the diversity and plurality of Indian society, Indian models of innovations cannot but reflect its culture of resistance, redefining the context and rebuilding the connections among different streams of ideas. Akbar tried to synthesise the good practices of different religions in what he called as ‘deen-e-ilahi’ and he failed. Maybe, if he had tried to nurture the secular institutions of each sacred belief system, he might have succeeded. While designing models of innovations for distributed knowledge management, the Honey Bee Network has been very conscious of keeping the identity of ideators intact. And still, it has tried to forge cooperation and development of a value chain around different idea streams after having scouted more than 1,50,000 ideas, innovations and traditional knowledge practices (not all unique or distinctive) from over 500 districts all over the country.

The first 5,000 ideas took Honey Bee Network and Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) about six years. The next 5,000 took another three years. And then, within next 10 years, we reached the current number with the help of various collaborators and civil society members and non-governmental individuals (NGI) through the National Innovation Foundation (NIF). I would write more about what has happened in this regard recently but I want to share a new platform that SRISTI has developed through primarily its own resources: www.techpedia.in.

It has more than 1,00,000 projects done by 3,50,000 students, mainly final-year engineering students, from over 500 institutions including IITs and NITs. This could be done just in about a year. The contribution of the SRISTI team set up for the purpose, led by Hiranmay, is extraordinary. If one were to search for all the projects of engineering students at Stanford and MIT, one would not be able to find such a platform. But in India, disregarding the indifference of the human resource ministry, AICTE or UGC, such a platform already exists.

What does it enable in terms of growth of ideas and innovations which would not have been possible without it? It makes it very difficult for a student to do what has already been done. The innovation quotient thus has gone up and so has the originality quotient. The search cost for the new students, MSME entrepreneurs, other companies looking for talent, for ideas to invest in or join hands with, has gone down enormously.

The real-life problems of the informal sector and small entrepreneurs are posted at techpedia.in so that students can take them up for their project work. The long-felt disconnect between the needs of small entrepreneurs and the talent of students and their guides is being overcome.
The innovations at the grassroots level have also been posted under the window of ‘innovations waiting to be augmented’ for those who wish to add value to existing ideas of farmers, artisans, roadside mechanics and others. Many Techfests at technology institutions have begun to include such value addition as a contest to gauge ‘groundedness’ of the Indian genius among tech-friendly youth.

It is obvious that not many projects will become products in a single cycle of six to nine months. It is here that the kho-kho model has been put forward. For example, four girls at a government women polytechnic developed a black box for automobiles – something that no Indian car has got yet, though insurance companies would sure love to have the black box data while settling claims. Another group of students at an engineering college of Nagpur has taken it forward to add value by bringing several new concepts of information processing. In a few cycles of kho-kho, it is likely to become a product with benefits being shared among all the contributors so that more and more collaborative innovations emerge through this platform.

Not many purveyors/scholars of innovations would have expected original ideas to emerge from polytechnics – among the most neglected institutions. And yet, one finds so many interesting examples of applied technologies whether dealing with RFID, laser, or sensor at such institutions. New hotbeds of innovations in small towns and small institutions are emerging which planners can continue to neglect because of their myopia.
The moment one looks at the name of the colleges of ideators, a new breakthrough model of collaboration across time, space and sectors and social segments starts emerging. It is this potential which is going to transform the Indian story in the coming decades. The fact that this story is unfolding without the help of the government or the private sector so far shows that when it comes to new ideas, the role of SRISTI in spawning new models and platforms such as NIF and Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) will continue to remain pivotal.

However, the full potential of techpedia.in cannot be realised without active involvement and ownership of the platform by the young technology leaders in different technical universities, MSME clusters, and other science and technology institutions. The future challenges will be shared in the next column. Till then, connect, collaborate and create new solutions through kho-kho and other match making options at techpedia.in.

--Anil K Gupta--

Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar elaborates more on his statement "More from Less for More" and his concept of Gandhian Engineering

2011-07-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar

Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar reigned as the Director General of CSIR. A Bhatnagar Fellow, he has pioneered the concept of ‘Gandhian Engineering’. In a short tete-a-tete with us, he explains what he means by Getting more from less for more.

Please elaborate more on your statement More from Less for More and your concept of Gandhian Engineering?

This phrase is very close to my heart. I talked about getting more from less for more in the Prestige Innovation Lecturethat I delivered at the Australian Academy in Canberra where they honored me with a fellowship. The tile of my talk wasGandhian Engineering and one wondered, what is Gandhian Engineering? So I asked what do engineers usually do? Engineers always get more from less. For example, initially mainframe computers used to occupy one full room but today, a laptop is even more powerful than that and hardly requires much space. So, this is getting 'more from less'. However if you is a laptop is affordable to the poor, then the answer to it would be no. So, the question that I raised was, can you get more from less for more and more people? Can you create products that are affordable to more and more people without compromising on the quality? It’s a tall order, so how do you do that? But then came a Ratan Tata who showed that a lower middle class individual can also afford a car and could be protected from the rain. He showed that it is possible to have a car practically at the price of a two – wheeler. This is what I call getting more from less, not for a selected few but for the ordinary masses. Now the question that needs to be asked is, why can't we do this all the time so that the largest cross-section of our society benefits? The corporates had been doing more from less for more all the time. They try getting more value by using fewer resources, for getting more profit orvalue for their shares.

Here, I wish to convey that,we need not create more value for money but we need to create more value for many and for acomplete paradigm shift in our thinking is necessary. India can only become a leader, if we successfully promotemore from less for more culture. Through this, we can achieve two things; first and foremost, the Indian industry will become very competitive and secondly, the growth will be inclusive. Now this translates directly to Biotechnology. If you lookat the costs of biotherapeutics, vaccines, or diagnostics then they are very high, and hence, not affordable for the common man. In India, we have repeatedly demonstrated that we can do more from less for more. For example, the fforts taken by Dr. K.I. Vara Prasad Reddy paid off and he brought down the cost of Hepatitis-B vaccination without compromising on its quality. His company currently supplies about 40% of total Hepatitis-B vaccinesupplies to UNICEF. The vaccine costs just `28 as compared to $400 a few years ago. An electrical engineer, who shifted his career for his passion, Dr. K.I. Vara Prasad Reddy came upwith this disruptive innovation through his companyShantha Biotechnics Pvt. Ltd.

I think for biotechnology, we need to tell ourselves to not do things at a low cost but for an ultra low cost, making them not just affordable but extremely affordable. "We require not incremental but disruptive innovation."

How can we take this great concept of 'Gandhian Engineering' to our young professionals?

To begin with, we need to give the bigger picture to our young professionals and make them realize that their future will be endangered, if they do not follow Gandhian Engineering.For example, as the President of Indian National Science Academy, I was chairing a lecture of Lord Martin Ritz. The title of his lecture was The Last Century: Will theCivilization Survive 21st Century? Now why was he askingthat? He was talking about the effects of climate change, globalwarming, ozone layer depletion, ravaging of biodiversityand all types of threats to human kind, so that youngpeople know that the world is in danger.

Now, how do you actually move away from this? Well,here again we need to remember Gandhiji! He once said thatearth has sufficient for everyone's need but not foreveryone's greed,which means that you need to useresources very carefully, so you preserve them not only for the current generation but even for the generations to come. This is only feasible with GandhianEngineering. For example, we have to look at alternative processes which will generate less carbon dioxide and in turn reduce the global warming and create more nature friendly technologies. Briefly, theprinciple of Gandhian Engineering needs to be deeplyimbibed, so that one continuously thinks in terms ofthese principles and start looking into new designs and opportunities. But to achieve this, we need to redesignthe courses, which will emphasize on getting morefrom less for more.

So you recommend that, all our courses need restructuring and redesign?

Absolutely! That’s when it is possible to give grandchallenges from every walk of life to our youngprofessionals, just as Ratan Tata did to his engineers byasking them to design a car for only $2000.

Sir, you are heading many innovation societies, eg: National Innovation Foundation, Global Research Foundation, but we feel still there is disconnect between grass root level and these agencies. How can we break this bottleneck?

I will give you a concrete example of National Innovation Foundation; Prof.Anil Gupta's Honeybee Network has created the forumcalled Techpedia. If you visit Techpedia portal, you will find project summaries for 104000 projects. Where did theycome from? These are summer projects done by young students in 6 months you will be surprised to see that many of the projects are very innovative. For example, someone designed anddiscovered a Black-Box for a car which nobody would have thoughtabout. It was done by 4 engineering students from Latur.

So now, I suggest to the corporate world to have a look at these projects and I also request good professors and elites to mentor these bright students. Such talentneeds to be mentored. As I said earlier, we have 104000 documented projects but there could be many more, as on an average, over 6 lakh students do 6 months of training projects every year. It means 36 lakh of brain - months of work which should not get wasted. For that, we first need to voice these projects and then connect them with elites, scientists, engineers, as well as corporate. This is just an example on how such connect can be built.

It takes the bright to teach the bright

2011-07-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

Anil Gupta writes on how the IIMs and IITs deserve more respect and credit for what they have done, though there is far more the state needs to do in India

A statement by a cabinet minister has triggered countrywide debate about how IITs and IIMs have earned their reputation. The argument is that these institutions are respected because of the quality of the students and not because of the faculty. There is no doubt that these institutions attract some of the best students of whom we are really proud of. But teaching bright students is no less challenging. A great deal of improvement of course needs to be brought about in the quality of research and teaching at these institutions. The way to do that is not to denigrate them, but to engage with the renowned scholars in these institutions. There are, however, larger issues that we need to worry about.

Today, India has produced global benchmarks in eye care, heart care, promoting grassroots innovations, sending the most economical mission to moon and putting ten satellites in different orbits in a single launch, five of which were made abroad. There must be a method in the madness. The time has passed when India should evaluate all its achievements by western standards. There are areas where India is creating standards by which the world measures its performance. A country that cannot take pride in its achievements suffers. Time and again, argument is made that IITs and IIMs and other institutions of higher learning are not doing so well because they are fully state-funded. By implication, the private-funded institutions should be on the top in each discipline. Unfortunately, facts don’t bear it out. The top academic institutions, almost without exception, are public-funded. But there are a large number of public-funded institutions that are of poor quality. So are the private-funded institutions. We should debate therefore whether the nature and mode of public funding should be modified to make other institutions as good.

There is no doubt that IITs and IIMs receive some of the best students. I am not sure, however, that we cannot receive even better students if we reduce our reliance on only quantitative scores and instead focus on multiple intelligence. With all the limitation of measurement, should we assume that the best students would go to the institutions where faculty is not up to the mark? Don’t we realise that students have a choice and they can easily go to private-funded institutions, if they have better faculty. It is true that far more can be brought out by harnessing the energy of the students than what is done today. To promote originality and innovativeness, in 2002 I proposed a portal to put the summaries of all the projects done by about a million technology students every year. Till 2009, I could not do anything nor could I mobilise support from the state. In 2009, a student of NIT, Surat, Hiranmay Mahanta helped in creating techpedia.in with support from a voluntary organisation. Today, it has more than 1,00,000 projects done by 3,50,000 students from over 500 technology institutions, including IITs, NITs and others. How else can accountability of students and the faculty be judged by society unless the output is available for scrutiny? One cannot find projects of students from MIT and Stanford, Cambridge and Oxford at one place. In India, it has been done without support from UGC, AICTE, HRD, etc. The quality of the projects will also help us find out the faculty who are guiding outstanding projects. Investing in this faculty would create a foundation for an Indian model for inclusive innovation and excellence. But we are not debating such models.

It is true that a great deal of effort is required to nurture excellence in institutions of higher learning. The first right to comment is of the academics who have achieved excellence and are respected around the world. The impact of their work should be measurable by unambiguous indicators. Any institution builder who is serious about nurturing excellence would first identify such outstanding achievers in each discipline and listen to them. It will be useful to ask the ministers concerned if they can list even five people in any discipline and when they talked to them last.

There are no short cuts in nurturing excellence. If native genius cannot influence public policy and institutions adequately, we should not grumble. It is our country and we have to collectively find answers. Just as we can’t outsource governance to so-called world class politicians, we can’t outsource the task of generating excellence in educational institutions to other countries. Building institutions takes years. We should ask ourselves whether the process of appointing the heads of these institutions could be better. We should also ask ourselves whether the concept of faculty governance has been adequately strengthened. When leaders seek support from above, they lose legitimacy below. It is true of political structures and it is also true of institutions of higher learning. Our space programme is one of the best in the world. It is true that they did not hire an IITian after the 1990s. If they could do so much without the best engineers, how much more could they do if they could attract the best they want? The same applies to DRDO, atomic energy and other strategic sectors. An eco system that promotes innovation, inclusion and excellence by crossing sectoral, hierarchical and other organisational boundaries will nurture excellence in every link of the chain. Bipartisan approach in appointments, providing support and respecting autonomy is necessary. Let us ask the hard questions. Gramsci once said, in war you attack the enemy at his weakest but in an intellectual argument, you attack the enemy at his strongest. I have tried to address the strongest argument of the minister.

Anil Gupta is a professor at IIM Ahmedabad. anilg@iimahd.ernet.in

Techpedia and GTU creating Innovation Ecosystem involving 9000 Professors in Engineering and applied Sciences in Gujarat

2011-07-05T10:56:00.000-07:00

400 Innovation Clubs in Gujarat in a mission of Democratising Innovation Management Process

2011-07-05T10:48:00.001-07:00

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The Idea of GTU Innovation Council - A pathbreaking Effort By Techpedia.in ( www.techpedia.in ) and GTU

2011-07-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

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Techpedia.in - Integrating Minds and Socialising Technologies

2011-07-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

1. How does Techpedia work? How can students submit their work?

Techpedia is an initiative of SRISTI which has coordinators and volunteers in different colleges across the country. They scout and collect projects from various engineering and technical colleges and then these data are uploaded onto the website. Presently, the uploading work has been made online, by which each and every college/student can upload one’s own database onto the website via its institute. As for the faculties, they have a separate page for themselves (NMN), where they can upload their own academic and personal details. These data are segmented/ categorized and then they are open for viewing by the general public, keeping all the IPR issues intact

2. Are students told to work on some issues or do they come up with their own solutions?

The database mostly comprises of the projects that the students and the faculties have done by themselves as a part of their mandatory final year project/ research. Apart from that Techpedia is now pooling Industrial Defined Problems (IDPs) from the Industries and diverting it to groups of students who work upon them and provide a solution to the concerned Industry. Multiple student and faculty groups irrespective of time and space attempt these problems via our web and lead a relay model in developing faster solutions saving the major R&D investments of many industries. Students can take up a solution at step 1 and add value till the concept is taken into stage 2 and hence creating a relay model till the idea get converted into a product in few cycles of attempt by multiple groups.

3. How effectively can these projects help the industry?

There are few basic ways by which the Industry benefits:

1. They have an exhaustive collection of more than 100,000 (and counting) projects from diverse fields in the website to look into and find a potential product and work upon it or make students work and finance them.

2. They can have students from the various colleges in the country to work on their problems and extract a solution at a much lower cost and labour.

3. The Research and Development (R&D) costs for developing new products, designs and finding solutions for the technical and design related problems are rather high and beyond affordability for most MSMEs

4. Most of the industries, particularly MSMEs lack the financial resources and infrastructure required for taking up R&D work

5. The Industry also finds it hard to hire experts and specialists, for undertaking R&D activities, with up-to-date knowledge about various advancements and innovations taking place all over the world.

6. The National Enterprise at Techpedia may provide a cost effective tool to the Industry for finding solutions for their technical problems by harnessing the creative talent of students and faculty in Technical institutions and making use of their infrastructure.

4. How is the response from companies? How many projects have been taken for Consideration by the industry?

SMEs have shown deep interest in the process. Industries like Argusoft, Vitagreen Products Pvt. Ltd., strapping solutions etc have shown interest and students projects from Techpedia database are in the pipeline to be in process of technology transfer from academia to industry. Mr Anuj Tewari, a former student of DAIICT Gandhinagar had prepared a software for Design and development of collaborative education games as a part of his final year project .The software was basically designed as a mobile application however the same could be used on computers having basic system configurations through LAN. Sharda (strategic help alliance for relief to distressed areas) Trust, A CSR activity of Arvind Mills came across this project through the huge database of over 1 lakh projects available at Techpedia.in. The trust works on promoting primary education across Ahmedabad. They have three centers with over 1000 computers functioning for providing quality education to the municipal students. They intend to use to use this software for their Educational Programme. Lot many industries have already submitted their IDPs (industry defined projects) (kindly look in “problems in search for solution “section at www.Techpedia.in) which will be addressed by almost 6 lac students every year. This will enable them to realize practical knowledge by solving real life industry problems. Now technical students will be addressing the problems faced by SMEs from user side so that a need based research culture can be developed.

5. How many projects have been collected so far? How are the projects collected?

The total number of projects in the website is a staggering 1,04,148. The number would increase by the same amount as the academic calendar for the new session proceeds and the projects from the last session are uploaded in the website. Many of the projects which are in the website are done by students from various colleges around the country including SVNIT, Surat, which is one of the nodal centres of Techpedia. The projects are collected across 37 disciplines of engineering voluntarily from numerous technical institutions

6. How many institutes have joined the program? What is kho-kho Model of innovation?

Currently, almost all the NITs, IITs and some of the popular private Engineering colleges in different parts of the country are participants of the movement. Apart from these, various polytechnic and government colleges are also a part of Techpedia. In the first phase of Project collection, a total number of 503 colleges were covered. Presently Techpedia has collaborated with various law universities like the GNLU, for the purpose of Patenting and legal issues to help students and faculties to make awareness regarding their INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. Students and faculties of all disciplines are putting their hand together to develop a knowledge society. . It is obvious that not many projects will become products in a single cycle of six to nine months. It is here that the kho-kho model has been put forward. For example, four girls at Government Women Polytechnic developed a black box for automobile [something that no Indian car has yet, though insurance companies would sure love to have the black box data while settling claims], another group of students at an engineering college, Nagpur has taken it forward to add value by bringing several new concepts of information processing. In a few cycles of kho-kho, it is likely to become a product with benefits being shared among all the contributors so that more and more collaborative innovations emerge through this platform.

7. What kind of incentives do the students get?

The best projects having socio technical applications in the website are nominated for the SRISTI Yuvakranti Award (young technologist award), which is awarded by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam at IIM Ahmedabad. Also if a particular project of a student/faculty is taken up by an Industry for further R&D and commercialization, then the normal process of Patent and royalty sharing is proposed to be followed, with the interests of the Student(s) considered.

8. How would you rate the quality of the work by students?

The students projects will be rated by an NMN (National mentoring Network) http://www.Techpedia.in/nmn/ consisting of senior Industry leaders, experts, academicians and NGOs, who may provide mentoring to the students and entrepreneurs online via Techpedia.in for the purpose of further developing and commercializing their innovations. This NMN would work like a Solution Exchange (UNDP model) where the experts would suggest solutions to the various problems faced by the Industry, based on their experiences .The inputs received from various experts on a particular subject would be moderated, compiled and posted on the website/Enterprise. The collection of the compiled ‘Solutions’ will serve as an archive of the “Best Practices” on various problems and issues faced by the Industry. The quality of projects judged by specific industry make a clear path for that technology to be absorbed by specific industry by providing proper incentives to the innovators.

9. What kind of an impact can these projects make in India?

Considering the number of students graduating in engineering alone, in a particular academic session, more than 1.25 lac projects are undertaken. If out of these many number of projects, at least 1% have the potential to be commercialized and marketed, then it would raise the benchmark of innovation in the academic atmosphere to another level and, recognition and due credibility would further propel the innovation and research quotient in the country to a higher strata.

10. What is Navsarjan sankul and its objectives?

GTU and Techpedia are creating 25 GTU Navsarjan Sankuls, (166 industry clusters+ 502 colleges of GTU will be divided into 20 innovation clusters of GTU Colleges and industries, called Navsarjan Sankuls) which will cut through the inertia of non-contact and will develop a new model of Industry-Institute Collaboration, based on innovation at the grass roots level. When in three years, every one of its more than 100,000 final year students and more than 20,000 faculty members are out in the field with the requirement that an innovative Final Year project is to be completed and put on the Techpedia, when there will be no way to hide the work, when good work will be awarded year after year and when thousands of small and big industries get the opportunity of thinking, jointly with young minds and faculty members about continuous improvements in their products& processes , an entirely new environment of innovations will be created .

11. Action Agenda for coming days?

To map four aspects of technology – in – use at MSME clusters and in the neighboring rural and urban communities. The first aspect is benchmarking the current level of energy, material and technology youths in the enterprise. Second, to identify any innovation that the MSME unit may have tried. Third is to identify the unsolved problems. And the fourth is to identify the policy bottlenecks which are coming in the way in realizing fully the entrepreneurial potential. Focus is to to identify the existing projects which as such or by pooling several projects can solve the existing problem. We aim to facilitate conversion of ideas and innovations into enterprises either through open innovation model or through IP protection. Unlike the low tech IT outsourcing business, in future platform like techpedia.in would enable high tech outsourcing with the distributed management of knowledge and ideas with high degree of redundancy. Imagine the cost of assigning same problem or different modules of same problem to hundreds and thousands of students. The competition and collaboration among the students will generate not only new solutions but many more new heuristics which will spawn further ideas and innovations

Future Challenges Roadmap

2011-07-05T04:58:00.000-07:00

GTU (Gujarat Technical University) Sankuls

2011-07-05T04:55:00.000-07:00

GTU (Gujarat Technical University) Innovation Council Features

2011-07-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

Ways to Empower Innovation Ecosystem in MSMEs

2011-07-05T04:42:00.000-07:00

Ways to Empower Innovation Ecosystem in MSMEs

a) How do we benchmark the technology, energy, waste, business practices, learning strategies form with in and each other, academics and global communities?

b) The experience of sristi's initiative www.techpedia.in shows enormous potential for MSME to learn from student projects, and challenge young technology students for solving their problems. Gujarat Technology University has introduced three credit for defining the problems of MSME and informal and grassroots sector and 12 credits in final year to try to solve these. If such a partnership is forged in all clusters, we could speed up the technologcial innovation eco-system in the MSME sector. But if colleagues have betetr operational model of achieving this goal, pl do share with oem information about results.

c) Let us get some data on number of problems of msme sector posted to S and T community, projects started and solved or unsolved in the last five years. That will be a good benchmark to start with so that in 12th FYP, more ambitious goals can be set up,

d) How many innovations by technology students in engineering colleges and and polytechnics have been deployed for value addition and testing at MSME level? Are there dedicated fund to support such linkage between innovations in tech educational sector and msme? likewise, data on funds for similar linkage between informal sector innovations and msme?

e) Have commercial banks having huge data on msme sector have been persuaded to share the unitwise data so that the msme could be linked with each other to pool capacities, demand, orders, and learnings. is there a model of collaborative growth already in place?

f) Do we have a list of key challenges in each cluster for which attractive awards have been announced to invite proposals/bids for solution?

g) Are there any compilations of innovations with in MSME which can be shared to raise the consciousness of members towards this goal.

h) Are there similar pooled databases of business innovations by msme units for lateral learning?

i) Are we tracking the patents filings by msme and their utilization levels.

The Innovation Sanklul at Bhavnagar allocates TPOs and other faculties to assist the students while choosing a problem/project definition at industries all over Gujarat

2011-07-04T15:42:00.001-07:00

Report of the meeting of the Sankul Committee of GTU's Patan Sankul

2011-07-04T15:41:00.002-07:00

GTU's UDISHA Club at SITG places Second Year Students for Summer Training in industries

2011-07-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

Morbi Sankul takes new initiatives for Final Year Projects and for mapping students to industries

2011-07-04T15:38:00.001-07:00

A session for improvement of Soft Skills of students to be conducted by Co-Chairperson (Industry) of GTU Innovation Sankul Committee of Vadodara - 1

2011-07-04T15:37:00.002-07:00

Udisha Coordinators at VVP Eng College Rajkot and Govt. Polytechnic Chhota Udepur: linking each of their pre-final year students to respective industries

2011-07-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

Target-oriented meeting of faculty members of Udisha Clubs of GTU INNOVATION SANKUL –AHMADABAD – 3 (GANDHINAGAR)

2011-07-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Innovation Sankuls at Vatva, Naroda and Gandhinagar make joint efforts to link each of their pre-final year student to an industry for scouting for IDPs

2011-07-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

MCA faculty of Surat Sankul work for helping their students obtain IDPs during the summer

2011-07-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

List of student placements in an appropriate industry by GTU Innovation Sankul Vadodara -2

2011-07-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

Report of the GTU Innovation Sankul activities at Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya, Vallabh Vidyanagar

2011-07-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

Report of the GTU Innovation Sankul Surat to work out Shodh yatras and procedure for Industry Defined Problems by pre-Final Year students

2011-07-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

Report on a meeting of the Principals of Mehsana Sankul

2011-07-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

A Report on Inauguration of GTU Innovation Sankul Vadodara – 1

2011-07-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

GTU Ankleshwar-Bharuch Innovation Sankul plans Mapping of each student to Industries and Shodh Yatras

2011-07-04T15:24:00.001-07:00

GTU Innovation Sankul –Navsari begins linking students to industries for their Final Year Project

2011-07-04T15:23:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to GTU Innovation Sankul -Junagadh for starting allocation of students to industries so that the pre-Final Year students can work out the Industry Defined Problems (IDP) during the months of June and July

2011-07-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Bhavnagar Innovation Sankul gear up to finish Sankul committee formation

2011-07-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Ms. Geeta Goradia, President, FGI and Co-Chairperson (Industry) of GTU Sankuls in Vadodara-2 at Parul Institute of Technology Waghodia appeals to industry members of the state to strengthen the agenda of Innovation via GTU Innovation Council

2011-07-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Naroda Innovation Sankul for completing formation of its Sankul Committee

2011-07-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Report of the 1st Meeting of GTU Innovation Sankul (Valsad-Vapi)

2011-07-04T15:14:00.000-07:00

GTU Innovation Council nominates Directors for Various Innovation Sankuls

2011-07-04T15:11:00.001-07:00

Report of the 1st Meeting of the Members of the Sankul Committee of GTU innovation Sankul Vadodara-2 at Parul Institute of Engineering & Technology

2011-07-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

Report of the meeting of Colleges and GIDC Lodhika at GTU Innovation Sankul Rajkot-3 - hosted by VVP Engineering College

2011-07-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

A Report on the Progress of Udisha Clubs in Colleges all over the State

2011-07-04T15:06:00.001-07:00

GTU Innovation Council Nominates Directors for Degree Engineering, Diploma, Pharmacy, MBA and MCA for Innovation Sankuls

2011-07-04T15:05:00.001-07:00

Invitation to MBA Colleges setting up Skill Council for Marketing (GTU-SCM)

2011-07-04T15:04:00.001-07:00

GICEA joins hands with GTU Innovation Council for creating Innovation Ecosystem in Civil Engineering at GTU

2011-07-04T15:03:00.001-07:00

Invitation to MBA Colleges setting up Financial Services Skills Council and Council for Human Resource Studies and Organization Structures

2011-07-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

GESIA to extend help to the GTU Innovation Council for innovations in the fields of Electronics and Communication, Computer Engg, Computer Applications and Information Technology.

2011-07-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

Naroda Industries Association hosts GTU’s Innovation Sankul Committee, Naroda’s meeting at Paryarvaran Mandir , Naroda

2011-07-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

Frugal and Gandhian Engineering Innovations are the unique strength of GTU Innovation Council

2011-07-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

GTU’s Udisha Clubs creating the Summer of Innovation Agenda by creating Linkages between MSMEs and Academia

2011-07-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

The first meeting of the Principals/Directors of GTU Innovation Sankul-Mehasana at Sankalchand Patel College of Engineering Visnagar on 26th April 2011

2011-07-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

GTU appoints 7 more Co-chairmen from industry and academia for GTU innovation Sankuls

2011-07-04T14:50:00.001-07:00

Report on a Conference for organizing the innovation Sankuls at Surat, Ankeleshwar-Bharuch, Valsad-Vapi and Navsari

2011-07-04T14:48:00.000-07:00

GTU appoints 18 more Co -Chairpersons (Academic) of Innovation Sankuls

2011-07-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

UNDERSTANDING TRENDS IN ENERGY SECTOR INNOVATIONS (USING TECHPEDIA SOURCE)

2011-06-13T14:34:00.001-07:00

This project attempts to study the trends in innovations in energy sector in academia – using Techpedia as a source for obtaining information relating to projects in this area worked on by various technical institutes across the nation. The objective is to understand where the academia is headed to in terms of energy innovation and how this direction is different from the focus on energy in India and on a more global level as well.