Create a research network to nurture innovations and start-ups: President

Adds that academic institutions are an important stakeholder for the socio-economic development of the nation

India is one of the fastest growing start-up bases worldwide and the heads of institutes of higher learning must work towards creating an innovation and research network to produce entrepreneurs and nurture innovations, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Thursday.

Indian youth were second to none in entrepreneurship, he said, while launching IMPRINT India, an initiative of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). “India serves as the fastest growing start-up base worldwide and stands third — with 4,200 start-ups, next only to the US and the UK. The government has initiated the Start-up India, Stand-up India campaign to incentivise entrepreneurial ventures.”

IMPRINT India would help develop a road map for research to solve major engineering and technology challenges in 10 technology domains relevant to India. The institutes would choose a domain or two: Healthcare (IIT-Kharagpur), computer science and ICT (IIT-Kharagpur), advanced materials, water resources and river systems (IIT-Kanpur), sustainable urban design (IIT-Roorkee), defence, manufacturing (IIT-Madras), nanotechnology hardware (IIT-Bombay), environmental science and climate change (IISc-Bangalore) and energy security (IIT-Bombay).

Mukherjee said there was a need to work towards creating an innovation and research network that would produce entrepreneurs and nurture innovations. “The setting up of innovation clubs in 60 central institutions in the past two years is a good beginning for a platform where novel ideas can be nurtured and innovators, mentored, to develop new products.”

The President said academic institutions are an important stakeholder for the socio-economic development of the nation. He had earlier asked central universities and NITs to adopt at least five villages and transform them into model villages. He said he now extends his call to all the 114 central institutions. After identifying problems in the adopted villages, they must pool all academic and technical resources at their disposal to provide solutions that will enhance the quality of life of our countrymen.

He called upon the academic leaders of institutes in social sector and humanities' domain to formulate a similar joint initiative like 'IMPRINT India' for conducting research on themes of relevance to public policy-making

Meanwhile Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the IMPRINT India brochure and handed over the first copy to the President of India on the occasion. In his remarks on the occasion, the Prime Minister said institutions of higher education should give primacy to innovation in learning. He said finding solutions to challenges like global warming and converting waste to wealth, were key to rise of India. He exhorted institutions of higher learning to focus on areas such as defence manufacturing. "Science is universal but technology must be local," the Prime Minister said. He called for enhanced industry-academia partnerships.