KOCHI: Young innovators and entrepreneurs who are standing at the threshold of converting their business ideas into ventures will now have an avenue to realise their dreams. The MGU’s Innovation Foundation aims to cultivate entrepreneurial interest in youth and bring business ideas to a creative end with the help of modern science and technology.
Vice-Chancellor Sabu Thomas said Higher Education Minister R Bindu will inaugurate the foundation on Monday. “Once operational, we will have products that have been incubated and produced at the centre coming into the market,” he said.
The centre has a built-up space of more than 14,000 sq ft. The VC said the system features incubation facilities with physical infrastructure, technical systems and incubators, expert support to guide entrepreneurs, business planning support, entrepreneurship training programmes and industry partnership projects.
“This is phase I of the project,” said Dr Robinet Jacob, director of the centre. According to him, it has been set up as a part of the Union ministry of education’s Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) 2.0. “The foundation is equipped with the best facilities like incubators, labs, co-working space and related facilities needed for a startup to get off the starting blocks successfully,” said Dr Robinet.
“This is a special vehicle project and is for innovators -- who can be students, faculty members or even those from other institutions -- to turn their ideas into ventures. This facility is not for those in the ideation stage. It is for those standing at the next level in the startup flow chart. It is at this stage that they face a lot of problems,” said Dr Robinet, adding the centre will be aiding these entrepreneurs by providing a support system that comprises incubators, entrepreneurship training, and familiarising and helping them contact investors like angel and venture capitalists.
“For this, we have co-working space for 42 companies on-site and virtual incubation space for 100 companies,” he said. The university has set up state-of-the-art technological facilities that will help these startups in sectors like scientific core cloud computing machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, cyber security, IoT, mobile and web apps, nanotechnology, bioinformatics and drug design service to become ‘MGU-incubated companies’.