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Brilliant research projects by students of technical institutes across the country would now be able to serve the needs of small and medium scale industries rather than collecting dust in store rooms.
Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta's brainchild 'Techpedia.in' is a unique website created to connect large amount of research work done at the undergraduate level in technical institutes to the industries concerned.
The projects, the database of which would be posted on the website, will benefit medium and small scale industries that cannot afford to have their own research and development facility.
"The fate of the well thought and hard-worked projects of the final year undergraduates is unknown, as scores of batches pass out through more than 3,000 technical institutes of the country," Gupta told PTI explaining why he took up the initiative.
"If at least one per cent out of the 100,000 projects, that are published each year, have the brilliance along with the potential to be developed into a product, it would hugely benefit the micro, small and medium enterprises, along with the major players in the field of manufacturing and services," he said.
"Along with serving the needs of industry, it would also help in bridging the existing gap between industry and academia, at the same time acting as a huge technical database which the students, faculties, and researchers alike could refer to," Gupta said.
The website has recorded 1,40,000 projects in the first year after its inception creating a huge database for the projects undertaken by students during their graduation, which so far remained unrecorded.
The initiative was taken up by Gupta-promoted NGO Sristi. "Actually this is the work of government or University Grants Commission, but as they have not done it we have to take it up," Gupta said.
"After procuring all the technical database of Gujarat based colleges, centres were set up at Nagpur, Pune, Rourkela, Banaras and Chennai with the mobilisation of numerous volunteers to amass projects and theses reports from Indian Institutes of Technology, NITs and other technical colleges of national repute in the first phase," Hiranmay Mahanta of Sristi, who is looking after the project, said.
"Within six months, more than 1,20,000 projects were procured from more than 500 colleges," he said. Mahanta said the results are encouraging as many industries have shown interest in projects posted on the website.
Gujarat-based Argusoft has shown strong interest in some projects based on voice over internet protocol Technology listed on the website, Mahanta said.
Another company Strapping Solutions is keen about developing projects in packaging industry, he said.
"Techpedia is developing its own patent activation cell to cater to the need of technical students and faculties, which is likely to make aware young people of their intellectual knowledge preservation rights at very young stage," Mahanta said.
"This platform will benefit the industry as well as students, as the research and development costs for developing new products, designs and finding solutions for the technical and design related problems are very high and unaffordable for most of the MSMEs," he said.
"The national portal may provide a cost effective tool to the industry for finding solutions for their technical problems by harnessing the creative talent of students and faculty in technical institutions and making use of their infrastructure," Mahanta further said.
"For students, the portal would help them and their guides in selection of projects from the list of the problems and issues being faced by the industry.
"The students may also get funding from the industry for working on the projects in which it is interested," he said.