The products of the startups at Maker Village in Kochi are world-class and at par with Singapore’s famed Electronic Hardware Ecosystem, according to an international delegation on a visit to the city.
A team with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), on taking a round of India’s largest electronic hardware incubator, lauded the innovative devices at the Kochi facility. They exhorted potential entrepreneurs to make good use of the encouragement being given by the Maker Village, which has Kerala Startup Mission as the supporting partner.
With experts from Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and New Zealand, the delegations was here as part of TENCON 2019, a premier technical conference held at Bolgatty Island. The October 17-20 conclave, with focus on ‘technology, knowledge and society’, brought together researchers, educators, students, practitioners, technocrats and policymakers from across academia, government, industry and non-governmental organisations to Grand Hyatt. The delegates discussed current works and recent accomplishments in all the three aspects of its theme.
India-born Singapore an innovator Kush Agarwal, who was part of the nine-member delegation, praised the ESDM facilities provided by the 2012-founded Maker Village under the Union Ministry of Electronics. “It’s the responsibility of the startups to come out with high-quality products and make them a success in global market,” added Dr Agarwal, founder-CEO of WaveScan Technologies that specializes in the R&D of disruptive beam forming electro magnetics based smart sensor systems and advanced AI algorithms.
Prof Takako Hashimoto of Japan’s Chiba University of Commerce said the Maker Village features start-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities that equips the incubators to meet the challenges of a tough competition in the industry at the global level.
Dr Nirmal Nair, who teaches at the 1883-established University of Auckland, noted that it was “unconditional support” Maker Village provides to the incubators, thus lightening their performance pressure. “The central government’s ‘Make In India’ projects has a flurry of activities that can benefit the startups here,” he added.
Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair said the IEEE delegation’s visit has helped broaden the world view of the startups. “The countries of Southeast and East Asia are of particular significance on the world electronic hardware map. We are planning for cooperation with similar teams in a big way,” he added.
The others in the visiting delegation at Maker Village were Chris Gwo Giun Lee of Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University, IEEE Asia-Pacific Director Leo Hwa Chiang, Takuo Suzuki of Japan’s Aichi University, Shimizu San of Dai Nippon, Jianwen Su of Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kazutoshi Yoshi of Waseda University, Shinjiku.
