Incubation centres in 9 engg colleges to help student entrepreneurs

To broaden the penetration of IT and BT industry in the State via a startup ecosystem, Karnataka has sanctioned new age incubation centres at nine engineering colleges.

Unveiling the programme on Tuesday, Information Technology and Biotechnology Minister S R Patil said that the endeavour via new age incubation centres was to take up projects to find solutions to local problems.

“Preference will be given to students, research scholars and alumni of the chosen colleges to take up local projects and find solutions to local needs,” Patil said.

The nine colleges selected based on the World Bank’s Tequip-II Report are National Institute of Engineering (Mysore), Siddaganga Institute of Technology (Tumkur), Poojya Doddappa Appa College of Engineering (Gulbarga), SDM College of Engineering (Dharwad), Dr P G Halakatti College of Engineering and Technology (Bijapur), Basveshwara College of Engineering (Bagalkot), NMAM Institute of Technology (Nitte), K L S Gogte Institute of Technology (Belgaum) and Jawaharlal Nehru National College of Engineering (Shimoga).

“Besides receiving up to Rs 40 lakh over three years, these college incubation centres will be networked to exchange experiences and learn and work together,” said Tanusree Deb Barma, managing director of Karnataka Biotechnology and Information Technology Services (KBITS) under the Department of IT&BT.

The centres will have access to a dedicated mentor cloud from organisations like The Indus Entrepreneur, National Entrepreneur Network and Nasscom. “Two-day events focusing on problem identification in the form of Hackathons will be conducted in September-October this year at Bagalkot, Tumkur and Dharwad. Thirty students from each college will participate in these events,” Barma said. “Every selected team will receive up to Rs 3 lakh to develop its idea. The outcome of this programme will lead to setting up of student-based companies,” she said.

The IT Skills Development Society, part of the KBITS, will train unemployed and underemployed youth in business process outsourcing (BPO), telecom, electronic system design and manufacturing, manufacturing, services, health, automation etc.

 
The Central Department of Electronics and Information Technology has given in-principle approval for a brownfield ESDM cluster in Bangalore and Mysore. The Bangalore cluster will be set up at Electronics City at an estimated cost of Rs 80 crore, of which 19 crore will be the State government’s share. The Mysore cluster is estimated to cost about Rs 30 crore.