Pune – Agreement was signed between Savitribai Phule Pune University and KPIT Engineering Ltd to take up prize winning startup ideas from Sparkle contest of KPIT into incubation centre at the University. Energy, Mobility, Safe green sustainable technologies ,energy storage are focus of ideas getting into start-ups.

Dr. Nitin Karmalkar, Vice Chancellor, Dr. N S Umarani, Pro Vice Chancellor, Dr Apoorva Palkar, Director, Innovation at Pune University and Mr Rahul Uplap, AVP Chief technology, Tejas Kshatriya, AVP and Vishal Pillai were present for the signing of the agreement.

KPIT runs a innovation contest Sparkle for students from undergraduate to Phd and teams win prize money upto 21 lacs for last 4 years. Centre for innovation, incubation & linkage at the University incubatees startups with such innovative ideas. This partnership will facilitate winners of the contest to apply directly to incubation centre at the University. This will support the ideas with prize money to be incubated and take shape of a startup.

“Centre for innovation has 100 affiliated colleges who have set up innovation & startup cells. KPIT and Centre for innovation would like to foster culture of innovation at this colleges jointly with KPIT,” said Dr. Apoorva Palkar.

KPIT sparkle has the finals scheduled for the contest this year on 23rd February where top 30 teams out of few thousand applicant teams would be invited to showcase the innovation through actual implementation.