BHUBANESWAR: The Higher Education department is working on a collaboration with the Startup Odisha to promote innovation and startup culture among the under-graduate and postgraduate students in state-run universities and degree colleges.
The idea is to provide a pre-startup space to the UG and PG students just like it is being done through innovation clubs in engineering colleges of the state. Also, it is evolving a system to bridge the gap between lab and commercial market as far as innovation of products through government-funded research is concerned.
A meeting over the issues was organised here on Tuesday between the Higher Education department and Startup Odisha which was presided over by the Higher Education Minister Rohit Pujari. A plan in this regard will be ready in a month or two.
Stakeholders who attended the meeting said the pre-startup space is aimed at offering several programmes and services to help students who are nurturing ideas of startups, to get started. “Like innovation clubs in engineering colleges where students develop innovative products for competitions, the pre-startup space will look at UG and PG students who are inclined towards innovation to help them examine if their ideas fit into market/societal needs and fine-tune them before registering their startups,” said a higher official of the department.
He added that as the Startup Odisha has 25 incubation centres under MSME, the department is exploring if these facilities can be used to incubate ideas by students. Besides, as the researchers of 11 centres of excellence under Odisha University Research and Innovation Incentivization Plan (OURIIP) are now ready with their innovations in different fields, the department discussed ways to commercialise their products through Startup Odisha and industry stakeholders at the meeting.