ICT Mumbai Launches its Own Tinkerers’ Lab

Padma Bhushan Prof. J.B. Joshi, the Guest of Honour (in grey coat)

Taking a step towards enabling students to go beyond working on metal, fabrications, clay, and plaster of Paris and providing students with more avenues to develop hands-on skills in a chemical lab environment, the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) has embarked on setting up its own Tinkerers’ Lab. This facility promotes hands-on learning towards innovation. The lab, which was inaugurated today, has been established with funding from Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited.

Alky Amines is a leading manufacturer of aliphatic amines in India. This lab has been set up as a part of their CSR initiative, with the support of Maker Bhavan Foundation (MBF), California, USA. The lab will facilitate hands-on learning for chemical engineering students, equipping them with a physical environment that is conducive to technological innovation.

Padma Vibhushan awardee and Emeritus Professor of Eminence, Institute of Chemical Technology, Prof. M.M. Sharma, the Chief Guest, inaugurated the event, along with Padma Bhushan Prof. J.B. Joshi, the Guest of Honour. The inauguration was attended by dignitaries such as Shri Yogesh M. Kothari, Chairman and Managing Director of Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited, Prof. A.B. Pandit, Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, and Dr. Hemant Kanakia, Founder of MBF.

Padma Vibhushan awardee and Emeritus Professor of Eminence, Institute of Chemical Technology, Prof. M.M. Sharma, the Chief Guest (in yellow shirt)

Padma Vibhushan awardee Prof. M.M. Sharma said, “Our country is at a stage where it is imperative that we provide a platform for people to explore their creativity, collaborate with others, and develop innovative solutions to real-world problems. While this happens in other fields, it will be interesting to see more innovative imprints in the field of the chemical industry. With the setting up of the Tinkerers’ Lab at ICT, I wish to see an environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, experimentation, and skill development as a result of which an ecosystem of innovation should be created, which drives our economy and social progress. The country that does not innovate stagnates.”

Tinkerers’ Lab could be instrumental to Industry 4.0. In this context, Mr. Yogesh M. Kothari, Chairman and Managing Director of Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited, said, “At the rate at which we are experiencing rapid change in technology, industries, societal patterns, and processes in the 21st century due to increasing interconnectivity and smart automation, Tinkerers’ Labs are essential for industries in India, as they provide access to tools and resources that can help drive innovation, workforce development, rapid prototyping, collaboration, and incubation of startups. By leveraging the power of Tinkerers’ Lab, industries in India can stay competitive in a rapidly changing global economy.”

Speaking of the importance of hands-on learning, Dr. Hemant Kanakia, Founder of Maker Bhavan Foundation, added, “Hands-on learning is essential for developing practical skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities. It can help learners achieve a deeper understanding of the subject matter and develop the skills students need to succeed in their chosen field. It will be good to see the Indian STEM education system actively engaging with the subject matter through physical activities, such as building, experimenting, creating, and tinkering through Tinkerers’ Labs.”

Expressing his views, Prof. A.B. Pandit, Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, said, “Creating Tinkerers’ Labs in academic spaces provides students to develop practical skills and knowledge that are essential for success in their chosen fields. Our country needs learning environments that provide access to tools, technology, and resources for hands-on learning, experimentation, and creativity. We as academicians should work towards popularising Tinkerers’ Labs in academic settings for good reasons.”

About Tinkerers’ Lab

Tinkerers’ Laboratory (TL) is a student-run, Maker Bhavan Foundation-funded 24x7 lab that aims to provide technical facilities to students and encourage them to go beyond their curriculum; explore technology as a hobby, as fun; and start tinkering, building, and innovating to convert creative ideas into actual engineering products. It was set up with the idea that it will complement engineering education with some much-needed hands-on tinkering and, thus, foster innovation. 

About Maker Bhavan Foundation (MBF)

Maker Bhavan Foundation (MBF) was formed in 2019 as a US 501(c) 3 public charity with a vision of modernising STEM education in Indian science and engineering colleges by promoting a culture of making and active learning and nurturing talented makers – students and faculty. This helps students to learn to build realistic engineering projects that solve real-world problems, develop an inventive mindset, and acquire essential soft skills and habits of lifelong learning. MBF works with various institutes in India, its faculty, and students, to make education more relevant and responsive to the real-life needs of people and society.

CSS Corp Ties with Govt-Run ICT Academy to Skill Youth of Tamil Nadu

CSS Corp, a new age IT services and technology support company today announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ICT Academy, a not-for-profit society, to jointly launch an extensive training program to skill the youth of rural, urban and low-income family groups in Tamil Nadu. Through this initiative, CSS Corp endeavours to help build the socio-economic conditions of underserved students through quality education and training in IT. The program was officially launched at an inauguration event held at Sri Sairam Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu on 3rd July 2019.

According to NASSCOM, the demand-supply gap for soft and technical skills have given rise to an urgent need to re-skill more than 50% of India’s IT workforce to meet the requirements of the industry. This has also led to a shortage of employment, specifically for entry-level jobs. With this collaboration, CSS Corp and ICT Academy aim to address the gap by imparting sector-specific skills through training and workshops that will lead to more employment opportunities.

ICT Academy, an initiative of the Government of India and endorsed by NITI Aayog, collaborates with the state Governments and Industries to train the higher education teachers and students thereby exercises on developing the next generation teachers and industry ready students.

The training program will be conducted in 20 colleges spread across Tamil Nadu. The program targets to provide 100 hours of intensive activity-based training in soft and technical support skills for 1,000 final year graduating students from engineering, arts & science colleges located in the rural and urban areas of Tamil Nadu. The module includes business communication, grammar, vocabulary, hardware & networking, operating systems, wireless technologies, and career counselling; all of which will be offered by professionals who have industry expertise. College students who aspire to apply for the program should currently be pursuing their final year in Computer Science & IT and must secure an average score of 6 CGPA until the last semester. Volunteers from CSS Corp will be closely involved in the program through overall monitoring of the training program, mentoring of the students and conducting mock interviews and group discussions.

The program is also aimed to skill students from financially backward families with annual income of less than or equal to 2.5 lakhs. Girl students will be given preference during the selection process to keep in line with CSS Corp’s objective of empowering more women in the technology sector.

Speaking about the initiative, Manish Tandon, Chief Executive Officer, CSS Corp said, “One of the major challenges for the IT industry is re-skilling the present and future workforce to bridge the demand-skill gap. CSS Corp has been consistently institutionalizing a culture that promotes learning newer technologies and solutions to embrace the current disruption. This year, through our CSR initiative, we look forward to imparting the skill expertise that we have curated to deserving students through quality education and proper training. We are privileged to partner with ICT Academy to design a program that will effectively empower students of Tamil Nadu to be truly future ready.”

Mr. M Sivakumar, Chief Executive Officer, ICT Academy said, "CSR comes as a big boon for the underprivileged and the development of rural India. We at ICT Academy, being a not for profit organization continued partnering with several leading companies across India for implementing their CSR objectives in the areas of employability, skill development, youth empowerment, capacity development of teachers, digital empowerment, entrepreneurship development, literacy initiatives and women empowerment. Thanks to CSS Corp for coming up with such a high impact initiative under their CSR.

The academy is aimed to meet the skill requirements of the industry and generate more employment. Through its initiatives, ICT Academy has strengthened India’s four important visions on Skill India, Digital India, Start-up India and Make in India.

Through this partnership with CSS Corp, ICT Academy being the skill development institution, is delighted to train the students on latest technology skills and increase their opportunity to acquire a good job in the industry. This is a welcome initiative by CSS Corp, and I believe this would make a positive impact to the beneficiaries’ family as well as the industry by bridging the skill gap."

CSS Corp is a new age IT services and technology support company that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence, automation, analytics, cloud, and digital to address customer needs. The company partners with leading enterprises to help realize their strategic business outcomes. Its team of over 6,000 technology professionals across 18 global locations is passionate about helping customers differentiate and succeed.

Govt. Launches TEN Square to Incubate Telecom Startups in India

India's Department of Telecom along with Telecom Centres of Excellence and C-DoT have come together and successfully set up TEN Square, an incubator which would specifically work towards promoting startups working in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). The initiative was formally launched during the recently concluded India M2M/IoT forum 2017 in New Delhi.

An official statement issued about the incubator launch reads,"Department of Telecom along with Telecom Centers of Excellence (TCOE) India and C-DoT has set up Telecom Entrepreneurs (TEN) Square at TCOE India to incubate startups in ICT. This initiative was launched during the M2M/IoT forum 2017."

The Telecom Entrepreneurs (TEN) Square or TEN Square will be helping the selected startups right from their seed funding to the successful development of their Proof-of-Concept of technology solutions.

As of now, the plan is to admit 5 startups in the ICT genre on a half-yearly basis. This makes it 10 startups in a year and a total of 50 startups in five years down the road. The startups will be incubated along with with seed funding, which will be based on equity in the startups.

According to the statement issued, the funding from Venture Capitalists (VC) is expected to come in at the later stage for further growth and expansion. The TEN Square incubator would make use of its existing facilities at the C-DoT campus and also any other incubation centre to the extent that it is feasible.

In order to find its startups, TEN has a series of events planned in collaboration with a number of different VCs in the future with business pitch competitions being an important event.

All the proposals submitted under the scheme will have to go through a gruelling screening process by an eminent committee, which will be headed by C-DoT's Executive Director. The committee will be going through each of the submitted proposals and shortlist the ones it deems suitable for the project. It will also be determining the funding support for each of the startup against equity in case to case basis.

Held from 6th March to 7th March this year, India m2m + iot Forum aims to highlight India as the ‘Manufacturing Hub’ for the m2m + iot industry where a wide range of high-quality and high-end engineering products, services and solutions could be sourced by the companies, organizations and governments of the nation and the world. The forum provides a distinct platform for transcontinental companies to showcase their business ideas, innovations and capabilities to the potential buyers in one of the fastest growing countries of the world ‘INDIA’.