This is what India needs, exclaimed Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India when he visited Centurion University’s Skills Campus in Bhubaneswar on November 2, 2019. He was visiting to inaugurate Future Nexus – Industry 4.0 Skills, a skill development centre started with the aim to focus on nurturing engineers who are industry-ready.
The union minister also witnessed the skill programmes for regular and hearing and speech-impaired trainees at the Apparel and Textile Center of Excellence, he drove through the automotive labs and was privy to many other activities of the university. A point to note is that he was being driven around on an e-rickshaw manufactured by an incubated unit of Gram Tarang under the Startup Odisha programme. His tour ended with the inauguration of the Future Nexus lab.
We got in touch with MD of Gram Tarang Technologies and Technology Officer of Centurion University Professor Rabindra Sah to understand more about their new lab, more specifically, the unique programme launched under it, Go-To-Market in 100 days.
"It was in September last year that we started thinking about bringing in technology that the industry needs. We have always aspired to stay ahead of the curve. In this context, we partnered with Dassault Systèmes for the unique programme," says Prof Sah. Through the Go-To-Market in 100 days programme, which is a 24 credit course and is a part of their curriculum, the mentors will guide the students through developing a product and commercialising it. The product can be from any discipline, asserts Prof Sah and adds, "We teach them how to improve upon the product and deliver it to the customers as well." They have worked on projects like a small commercial vehicle, foot over bridge, polyhouse and a lot more.
We are informed that the lab gets two to three visitors every day. "They don't just want to see the lab, but also see the products that are being developed by the lab," says Sah who has been in the industry for 27 years prior to joining the university. He was also proud to inform that the products developed in the lab are winning students and the university laurels. The electric vehicle developed in the lab recently won a jury award at a competition organised by Dassault Systèmes, wherein, 22 countries had participated. They won three more awards in other competitions as well. "It goes to show that the lab is yielding results," he said.
