Vice Chancellor, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra Prof. R.K. Sinha chaired the 7th Managing council meeting of SMVDU Technology Business incubation Centre held at SMVDU campus, Katra on 14th February 2020. The meeting was attended by members Dr. Anil Wali, MD FIIT, IIT Delhi; Dr. Yashwant Dev Panwar, Head Patent Facilitation Cell, TIFAC, New Delhi; Mr. Amit Singal, Co-founder & CEO, Startup Buddy; Prof V.K. Bhat, Registrar & Dean FoS; Sh. Neeraj Gupta, Finance Officer; Dr. Ashutosh Vashishtha,Cordinator; Dr. Rakesh Kumar Jha, Dean R&D, Dr. Summet Gupta, Dean Academics; Dr. R.K. Mishra, Head SoME; Dr. Kumud R. Jha, Head SoECE, SMVDU.
The member secretary, CEO SMVDU-TBIC Dr. Swarkar Sharma and Manager SMVDU-TBIC Swati Sharma shared the agenda and made the presentation. The main agenda of the meeting was to take strategic decisions on fostering entrepreneurial environment in J&K region, discuss policy matters, appraisal and evaluation of various activities carried out by TBIC society and progress report presentation. Team TBIC highlighted that in last one year SMVDU-TBIC has made exponential growth and carried out various successful events. The most prominent ones were various innovation challenges & workshops such as 3D Printing Workshops, High Performance Computation (AI) Workshops etc. The events like “Startup Weekend Katra” has marked a huge success and has been organised in association with the ‘Indian Army’. A large number of applications were received in response to these events/ activities. Many of these are under consideration, some are in pre-incubation as virtual incubatees and others have already been shortlisted for prototype development. Currently, 12 of such innovative ideas have been converted as businesses and finally registered as companies with Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India. Seven of these now have been recognised as Startups by Government of India and many of these have started to make their mark at National levels by winning various prestigious Government and Industrial awards. The members appreciated the efforts of SMVDU TBIC team that has been instrumental in encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship in the J&K region.
Team further informed members that SMVDU-TBIC has been identified as the first technology business incubation centre in J&K region to establish NIDHI PRAYAS Centre. This support shall allow the innovators to try their ideas without fear of failure, hence allowing them to reach a stage where they have a ready product and are willing to approach incubators for commercialization. In the meeting, strategies for sourcing of funds, technology development and transfer methodologies, Startup policy for faculty and staff was also discussed. Patent filing and facilitation was discussed in details as TBIC has always emphasized on the importance of IPs and have encouraged students to file patents. As a result, SMVDU has become the only University in the region that has more than 15 patents filed by faculty, staff and students out of which 7 have been published so far and more than 25 are in pipeline. The committee members shared their valuable insights for overall performance improvement. The meeting ended with thanks to chair.