International Institute of Digital Technologies (IIDT), Tirupati, which will soon have a campus in Visakhapatnam is being converted into an autonomous institute with a deemed university status.
As a first step in this direction, the State Government issued GO Ms. No. 89 on September 20 granting permission to IIDT as a Section 8 company with a three-tier governance structure sanctioning an amount of ₹97.95 crore towards capital and operational expenditure for the next two financial years.
It will be managed by governing council, executive council and an administrative unit de-linking it from AP Electronics and IT Investment Agency (APEITA), an autonomous society under the Department of IT, Electronics and Communications.
‘Campus in Vizag’
“We are in talks with globally reputed universities and centres of excellence for collaborations. IIDT, which has already admitted three batches of students in cyber security and business analytics, will soon have a campus in Visakhapatnam,” J.A. Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary and IT Adviser to Chief Minister, said.
“We are also in the process of introducing new courses in artificial intelligence and machine learning and blockchain and other technologies based on applied mathematics,” he told The Hindu .
Virtual university
The government had earlier declared that IIDT would be made India’s first virtual university to enable Andhra Pradesh to be in the forefront in the next generation digital economy and become the first place of choice for the students, industry and governments.
IIDT has plans to launch more courses in 2019 and achieve an overall intake of 250 students by next year spread across four programmes. It wants to increase the overall intake to 400 students by 2021. IIDT will spend ₹94.06 crore on capital expenditure and ₹3.89 crore on operational expenditure during 2019-20 and 2020-21.
“We are very happy that IIDT is moving in the right direction to emerge as an institute of global repute for offering industry-relevant courses in new age technologies,” AP Innovation Society CEO Winny Patro said.
