ROURKELA: At a time when a vibrant and facilitative entrepreneurial eco-system is slowly shaping up at Rourkela to create newer products with innovation and product-centric research, the Foundation for Technology and Business Incubation (FTBI) of the National Institute of Technology - Rourkela (NIT-R), has been making a significant difference.
The FTBI, set up in 2016, by a few students of the institute, has incubated 60 startups, mostly technological. While FTBI has members across the country, 35 more startups are in the pipeline, informed FTBI head Prof Manoj Kumar Mishra.
Of the 60 incubated startups at least 40 were founded by NIT-R alumni. The FTBI so far has received 12 patents and 15 applications have been filed. The facility has been instrumental in generating a sizeable number of jobs and this year it has received Startup India grant of `2 crores, said FTBI CEO Chiranjibi Samal.
He said FTBI has been recognised as a technology business incubator under the joint initiative of DST and MHRD, Startup India and Startup Odisha. The facility has been providing the NIT-Rourkela’s faculty, students and incubators a vibrant and facilitative startup eco-system to build an entrepreneurial environment and create useful products and services with product-centric research using the knowledge of hundreds of professors and thousands of students on varied subjects.
Samal said FTBI has been implementing several programmes in collaboration with PSUs and government departments. “The idea is to catalyse and promote the development of science and technology-based innovative enterprises and promotion of employment opportunities, especially using technology developed and/or improved by faculty and students of NIT-R.
The FTBI facilitates projects in fields of renewable energy and sustainable environment, Information & Communication Technology (ICT), smart materials and textiles, IoT, drug development, food processing, scientific and business software, refrigeration and cryogenics, biotechnology, bio-medical products, instruments and other emerging areas.
Meanwhile, STPI is trying to make Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), Rourkela the academic partner of FTBI for the upcoming Industry 4.0 Centre of Entrepreneurship (CoE) initiative for the promotion of innovation and startup activities.