Pune: SPPU Will Soon Have A Center of Excellence in Digital Agriculture with Emerging Technologies
Pune, October 29, 2020 : The Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Enterprise (CIIE) at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) and Idealabs FutureTech Ventures today signed a letter of intent (LoI) for setting up ‘Centre of Excellence in Digital Agriculture with Emerging Technologies’.
The centre of excellence will host the first of its kind incubation centre exclusively for startups in digital agriculture with emerging technologies. The LoI was signed by SPPU vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar and Idealabs FutureTech Ventures founder Pankaj Diwan in presence of SPPU registrar Prafulla Pawar, dean of faculty of interdisciplinary studies Sanjeev Sonavane, CIIE-SPPU director Apoorva Palkar and Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) Board Member Milind Kamble.
The CoE shall include a Maker Space and Digital Labs on emerging technologies. Innovation events such as Hackathons and Accelerator will be conducted across the year culminating into a Maker Faire, as part of the annual international conference showcasing the best innovations and startups. It will also conduct skilling programmes and joint certification on emerging technologies.
Diwan said, “traditional agriculture is all set to get disrupted with emerging technologies like blockchain, machine learning and data science by improving farm digitisation, storage efficiency, supply chain, and value-added crops and many more. This requires a combination of young entrepreneurs and innovators and support in terms of domain and technology expertise, investment and right strategies for GoToMarket.”
Karmalkar said, “we have identified agriculture as one of the focus domains for research and innovation as part of our CIIE and expect this initiative to bring a meaningful impact in the agriculture space by creating a conducive environment with the help of Idealabs.”
Palkar said, “the centre will enable startups, students, researchers to collaborate and innovate and create path breaking solutions. They will get access to the latest tools, domain expertise and mentoring to take the innovative products and solutions from lab to farm to market. Idealabs has the right expertise and track record to help us build and run the activities associated with this CoE.”
About Idealabs
Idealabs is a Hyderabad based leading technology company and works with policy makers, corporates and universities in providing solutions for upskilling on emerging technologies, promote product thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Idealabs has partnered with leading companies such as Microsoft and Tech Mahindra for Technology expertise and ICRISAT, SourceTrace and other leaders in Agriculture Domain.
Idealabs has been pioneering Academic Innovation for the last 15 years. The company has built the country’s largest academia – industry ecosystem with more than 150 industry mentors, 100+ educational institutes, multiple start-up accelerators and incubation hubs and 300K+ professionals. Idealabs group has successfully concluded 190+ innovation & technology programs and incubated 50+ new product ideas.
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