‘Maker Village’ Brings Together Elites of the Startup Industry

KOCHI:
India’s largest hardware electronic incubator ‘Maker Village’ brings together an array of elite speakers and stake holders of the industry by organising Kerala’s first ever National level hardware startup conclave at Kochi on March 10.
More than 1200 participants, including hardware startups, officials from Centre and state governments, industries, technology firms, funding agencies, accelerators, hardware incubators, branding gurus and academic institutions from across the country will attend the event, to be held at the Gokulam Convention centre at Kochi.
Major companies like Lockheed Martin , Siemens , Dassault Systems , Qualcomm India, Intel , ARM , Imec , Bosch , Tejas Networks, Invecas, Rambus, Texas Instruments India will also participate in the event.
Prasad Balakrishnan Nair, CEO, Maker Village, pointed out that there was a time when Kerala’s electronics industry thrived and set an example for other states in the country. “But owing to several unfavourable circumstances, we could not tap its potential. Now the environment has become favourable again. With both the governments giving key thrust on building a robust hardware electronic manufacturing industry, this event is of high significance,” he pointed out.
“Besides, the event would bring together all the key stake holders in the hardware domain such as policy- makers, technology providers, fund managers and the startups under the single roof,” he added.
Acclaimed national and international speakers and business leaders will make presentations and interact with the participants at different sessions of the conclave. The topics to be covered will include ‘ Next Gen’ Technologies in the Hardware and the seed to market strategies relevant to the Hardware.
M Sivasankar, Secretary, Electronics & IT, Govt of Kerala, Phil Shaw, Chief Executive, Lockheed Martin India Pvt Ltd, R K Shenoy, Senior Vicepresident, Robert Bosch Engineering, Heriberto Saldivar, Head Robotics, Accelerate and Director, Brinc, M Madhavan Nambiar IAS, Chairman, IIITM – K, B V Naidu, Chairman & CEO Sagitaur Ventures Pvt. Ltd, Dr Saji Gopinath, Director, IITM -K, Uday Dodla, Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm India, Simon Zhang, Managing Director, Make Brinc.io, Raghu Panicker, Country Sales Director, Mentor Graphics, Arnob Roy, Co – Founder, Tejas Networks Ltd, K Krishnamoorthy, VP and MD, Rambus Chip Technologies, Dr Prahlad Vadakkepat, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore, Rajeev Khushu, Texas Instruments, Dr Jayasankar Prasad, Director, ICFOSS, Special Officer, Hardware Mission, Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, Srivardhini K Jha, NSRCELL, IIM, Bangalore etc will participate in the event.
The conclave which begins at 9.30 am will conclude at 5 pm. Exhibitions by industries, technology firms, service providers and startups,Design for Manufacturing Workshop by BRINC accelerator China and Barcelona,One-to-One Pitching with Fund Managers for the Startups have also been planned on the sidelines.
‘Pitch Perfect’, a pitching competition for the startups in which highly qualified and experienced judges will assess their startup products where they will get a chance to win prize money on the spot, will be a key attraction of the event.
The participants will get two minutes for presentations. The judges will assess them from both the technical and management sides. There will be three judges, each with a prize money of Rs 10,000 and it’s up to the participants to grab the maximum amount upto Rs 30,000 from them.
Parallel sessions by Electronic Development Funds ( EDF) for One-to-one with selected Hardware Startups will also be organised. Hardware Startups from all parts of the country are expected to attend this event. Entry is free for all.