RIM to tie up with 100 colleges in Kerala this year

Will help & engage engineering students in Kerala to develop applications for BlackBerry

BlackBerry (BB) maker, Research In Motion (RIM), is eyeing to associate with around 100 colleges in Kerala under its BlackBerry BASE (BlackBerry Apps by Student Entrepreneurs) initiative this year.

BlackBerry has started a BlackBerry Innovation Centre in association with Kerala-based Startup Village at Rubus Labs to help and engage engineering students in Kerala to develop applications for BlackBerry, Annie Mathew, head (alliances and developer relations), RIM India, said.

"We have entered partnership with five colleges and we have plans to tie-up with around 100 educational institutes in Kerala within a years' time," she added.

BlackBerry invites students to come with innovative mobile application ideas and to develop the apps with technical support from its team. The training sessions will be conducted across 126 engineering colleges in Kerala under the BlackBerry BASE programme.

RIM had started this initiative last year in Tamil Nadu on a pilot basis with more than 800 students. "Last year, we have received a good response. Of the total apps developed, we have accepted 30 applications. We have plans to ramp up this initiative to other states in the coming years," she said.

RIM today showcased its latest technology and applications on BlackBerry platform deployed at SkyPark Café in Hyderabad, making it India’s first Near Field Communications (NFC) café powered by BlackBerry. The cafe is powered by BlackBerry smartphones, PlayBook tablets and NFC-based applications.

RIM has also plans to associate with more than 100,000 registered developers to create innovative and user-friendly applications by 2014.

"Our developers' ecosystem is growing significantly. Part of the reason is that our team is being able to guide and mentor the developers and we also work closely with a certain set of partners to get the latest in technology to them. We are bringing the best technology partners to churn out best applications in India,” she had told Business Standard earlier.