Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Communications and HRD Sanjay Dhotre has said the Maker Village at Kalamassery has the capacity to improve the country’s defence ecosystem.
The Minister’s statement comes just days after the Union government selected the Maker Village as a partner for its iDEX programme to create solutions for the armed services. Maker Village, which functions under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has the Indian Institute of Information Technology-Kerala as the host institute.
“The country needs more and more of its products to be made in its soil. The Maker Village will be a good resource in the ongoing initiative,” he said.
Mr. Dhotre also called upon the Maker Village here to involve BSNL and MTNL in developing products of cutting-edge technology.
Heaping praise on the Maker Village during his visit here on Thursday, Mr. Dhotre said he wants to replicate the model in other parts so that the entire country benefited from it.
He described the country’s largest hardware incubator as the only successful hardware start-up venture by the Union Government in association with a State. The four-year-old establishment has made progress usually achieved in a quarter century, he observed.
He addressed representatives from Bosch, BPCL, Cochin Shipyard, NPOL, V-Guard, SFO, Brinc, GAIL, Altair and Qualcomm. Describing the Industries’ relation with the Maker Village as “symbiotic”, Mr. Dhotre said such tie-ups can help the country develop “horizontally, and not just vertically”.
Earlier in the day, the Minister and his high-level delegation did a round at the Maker Village.
Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair said that the establishment had by far incubated 75 start-ups and applied for 48 patents of which six have been sanctioned.
Kerala Startup Mission CEO Saji Gopinath briefed the Minister about the entrepreneurship development and incubation activities.
