KOCHI:
Maker Village here has been selected by the Union Government as a centre under its SPARSH programme, which aims at strengthening the agriculture sector through affordable technological interventions and addressing pressing social problems like air pollution.
The selection, which comes as a huge recognition for Maker Village, will offer greater opportunities to the hardware startups incubated by the facility in their journey from ideas to market-ready products. The theme for which the approval has been given is “Nurturing and accelerating social innovation at Maker Village by leveraging Deep Technology.”
Maker Village will shortly sign the SPARSH–Social Innovation Programme for Products: Affordable & Relevant to Societal Health– agreement with Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), New Delhi.
As India’s largest hardware deep tech incubator, Maker Village has been assigned with the twin task of developing cutting-edge solutions to combat air pollution and help strengthen technological solutions in agriculture within a time-frame of three years.
The scheme shall be operated in two cycles of 18 months each. The first cycle will focus on developing agriculture technologies and the second cylce on solutions for combating environmental pollution. The approval comes after a rigorous evaluation and screening process by a panel of experts from BIRAC, and subsequent due diligence at site at Maker Village.
“The selection gives a golden chance to our startups that are into the areas of pollution control and agritech to get
selected for immersion and subsequent development of solutions,” said Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair. Also Maker Village is poised to host Social Innovators from outside the eco system, said Nair
“Beyond the finacial support, SPARSH centre will immensely benefit the startups with deep expertise provided by the mentoring network and the immersion partners” Nair added. The SPARSH centre scheme is piloted by the Central Government’s BIRAC, Department of Biotechnolgy under Ministry of Science and Technology.
The SPARSH centre will create a unique platform to leverage emerging deep technologies for successful social innovation. The 2013-launched SPARSH has a component called Social Innovation Immersion Program that is into creating a pool of ‘social innovators’. Through SPARSH centres, they will identify the needs of communities and come up with innnovative products and services.
The social innovators are selected after a thorough scrutiny of detailed project proposals. The selected fellows must complete the product design and come up with the model within the first 16 months. Their final report should be submitted within 20 months.
The approval for the SPARSH centre comes closely on the heels of the prestigous selection of Maker Village as a partner for the Defence Innovation Organisation under the Innovation for Defence Excellence of Ministry of Defence. Providing solutions for Defence application to accelerating social innovation through SPARSH centres, Maker Village has come of age covering the entire gamut of activities in the innovation landscape. During last October Maker Village has got approval for the establishment of TIDE 2.0 (Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurship) centre by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
Maker Village, which was founded in February 2016 as a pioneering initiative under the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT and Government of Kerala with Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Trivandrum , as the host institute is currently incubating more than 75 nascent hardware deep tech startups firms from across the country. Its premises at Integrated Startup Complex in Kalamassery, 20 km north of here, also has the country’s biggest facility for ESDM (electronic system, design and manufacturing).
