• IIT Kanpur’s technology business incubator, SIIC, hosted multiple addresses by key team members, Dr Nikhil Agarwal, Ms. Sudha Selvaraj, and Mr Rahul Patel, elaborating on IIT-Kanpur’s well-equipped infrastructure to foster respective startups.

• The participating students and faculty across 20 government colleges visited IIT-Kanpur’s Bio-Incubator Lab and Smart Grid Energy Lab.

• The event concluded with participating students pitching their selected projects to and 3 teams from REC Mainpuri and HBTU Kanpur were declared winners for cash prizes.

Startup Incubation and Innovation Center, IIT Kanpur organized a unique 2-day in-person workshop in first-of-its-kind program, REC Innovation Platform, supported by Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (RECL) through its CSR funds. The workshop extended participation to students across the 20 regional government engineering and science colleges from the state of Uttar Pradesh. The workshop was part of the year-long program aimed to drive the students and faculty members of the respective colleges towards developing a sound understanding of entrepreneurship and help them identify the potential challenges in their entrepreneurial journey.

The event commenced with an inaugural address by Prof AR Harish, Dean Research & Development, IIT Kanpur followed by key addresses from the core team members at SIIC, Dr Nikhil Agarwal, CEO- Foundation for Innovation & Research in Science & Technology (FIRST IITK), C3i Hub, Piyush Mishra, Sudha Selvaraj, and Rahul Patel. In addition to enlightening the audience about the well-equipped infrastructure at the incubation centre of IIT Kanpur, the sessions further outlined the process of product acceleration for a startup, accessing funding across various stages, and how SIIC’s help can be extended towards fostering innovation-driven ecosystem at each of these colleges. Key insights and learning from successful national initiatives of SIIC - The Ventilator Project and Mission Bharat O2 Project were also share by Rahul to participates of this workshop.

Mr. N.K. Maurya, CGM, RECL and member of the Program Committee in his address to participants encouraged students to take up bold and path breaking innovative projects to solve the challenges around us. He also invigorated the faculty members to support and acknowledge such innovative projects in their nascent stage through the incubation centre/ cell in their respective colleges.

Prof Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur, congratulated the SIIC team on the initiative and added, “IIT Kanpur has always supported bringing change at the grassroots. The SIIC team has taken another positive step in the direction and we believe that this collaboration with RECL will usher in a new era of building entrepreneurial ecosystem in state of Uttar Pradesh.”

About Start-up Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC), IIT Kanpur

Established in 2000, Start-up Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC), IIT Kanpur, is one of the oldest technology business incubators with many successes under its belt. In 2018, the leadership brought the incubator's operations under Foundation for Research & Innovation in Science & Technology (FIRST), a Section-8 company promoted by IIT Kanpur. The multifaceted, vibrant incubation ecosystem nurtured over two decades continues to fill all the gaps on the road to convert an idea into a business.

Website - https://siicincubator.com/