The Department of Higher Education, Government of Odisha, is planning a collaboration with Startup Odisha to come up with a pre-start-up space for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students. This move aims to promote innovation and start-up culture among students in state-run universities and degree colleges.

Further, the main idea behind this move is to provide a pre-start-up space to the UG and PG students, just like it is being done through innovation clubs in engineering colleges of the state. Additionally, it is evolving a system to bridge the gap between the lab and commercial markets as far as innovation of products through government-funded research is concerned, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.

A meeting was held on Tuesday, December 13 between the Higher Education department and Startup Odisha which was presided over by the Higher Education Minister, Rohit Pujari. A plan in this regard will be ready in a month or two. Stakeholders who attended the meeting said the pre-start-up space is aimed at offering several programmes and services to help students who are nurturing ideas of startups, to get started.

Sharing more, a higher official of the department said, "Like innovation clubs in engineering colleges where students develop innovative products for competitions, the pre-start-up space will look at UG and PG students who are inclined towards innovation to help them examine if their ideas fit into market/societal needs and fine-tune them before registering their start-ups." Further, as Startup Odisha has 25 incubation centres under MSME, the department is exploring if these facilities can be used to incubate ideas by students, he added. 

Moreover, as the researchers of 11 centres of excellence under the Odisha University Research and Innovation Incentivization Plan (OURIIP) are now ready with their innovations in different fields, the department discussed ways to commercialise their products through Startup Odisha and industry stakeholders at the meeting. In this regard, the minister said, "Currently, the innovation that is emerging from research is limited to the campuses as the idea of commercialising them has not been explored. We are trying to address this soon."