Kerala: The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) has officially launched the ‘Graphene- Aurora program’ during a ceremony at Maker Village Kochi in Kerala.
This program will be carried out by Digital University Kerala and will receive funding from the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), the Government of India, the Government of Kerala, and industry partners. The total budget for the program is set at Rs 94.85 Crore, with Carborundum Pvt Limited being one of the key industry partners that have joined.
Alongside the development of startup products, the technologies and products that are created at research and development centers like the India Innovation Centre Graphene (IICG), established at Makers Village in Kochi, shall be taken into consideration for future commercialization.
Addressing the gathering, MeitY Secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma said that a section 8 company (not for profit) called ‘India Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre (I-GEIC)’ shall be set up and the initial operations will start from the recently opened facility of the Government of Kerala at Digital Science Park in Trivandrum. It shall fill the gap between R&D and commercialization by providing a complete facility to startups and industries.
He also emntioned that it shall nurture the deep/emerging Graphene technology & innovation ecosystem that can guide, develop, implement, and support SMEs and startups to commercialize developed graphene technologies for scale adoption. He also mentioned that the creation of a commercialization eco-system for graphene as an emerging technology would help India take a pole position in the world’s new material market.
Announcing the progress and contributions of Maker Village, to the development of hardware startups in the country, he assured MeitY’s support for the creation of a complete ecosystem for Electronics Product Testing. He also appreciated the outcomes of other MeitY-funded Centre of Excellence on IIOT Sensors and India Innovation Centre for Graphene that complement the solutions from materials and sensors to system integration that electronic product development.
