KOCHI: Maker Village Kochi is a role model fit for application in a wide range of fields, including high-tech and deep-tech to agriculture, healthcare, environment, automation, business and industry, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre said here on Thursday.
Hailing the country’s largest hardware incubator as the only successful hardware startup venture by the Union Government in association with a state, he said during a visit to the Maker Village that the four-year-old establishment has made progress that is usually achieved in a quarter-century.
“I would say this is a startup of startups,” he said after addressing representatives from Industry firms such as Bosch, BPCL, Cochin Shipyard, NPOL, V-Guard, SFO, Brinc, GAIL, Altair and Qualcomm.
The minister said Maker Village could engage in improving the country’s defence ecosystem. Describing the industries’ relation with Maker Village as “symbiotic”, Dhotre said such tie-ups can help the country develop “horizontally, and not just vertically”. He wants to replicate this model in other parts of the country so that the entire country gets benefit out of this.
Maker Village, which functions under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has Indian Institute of Information Technology-Kerala as the host institute.
Introducing the innovative devices, Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair pointed out that the
establishment had by far incubated 75 startups and applied for 48 patents of which six have been sanctioned.