Industry & academia under GIZ's initiative come together to solve challenges faced by MSMEs

Ludhiana, Aug 5 (KNN) Systematic cooperation between enterprises and academic institutes is key to create an innovative ecosystem and thus aiming to bridge this gap, 6 teams consisting 23 students and 3 faculty coordinators from Guru Naka Dev Engineering College Ludhiana took up 6 projects on SME live problems of local industries under Deutsche Gesellschaft Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ India) initiative.

During one day interactive ‘Industry-Academia Meet’ on Innovation held recently to sensitize the stakeholder and promote innovation among MSMEs fostering Industry-Academia linkage in Ludhiana region, representatives from District Industries Centre (DIC), Government of Punjab shared overview of various programs/initiative by the government to support innovation and promote industry- academia linkage.

The event was jointly organized by GNDEC, MSME INNO project of GIZ India and (CICU) in Ludhiana under the ambit of bilateral project ‘Program for Modernisation and Innovation Promotion in MSME in India (MSME INNO)’ being implemented by Ministry of MSME and GIZ.

The event gave opportunity to participants experience first-hand benefits of cooperation between MSMEs and academic institutes.

The interaction helped the stakeholders from regional MSMEs to explore the scope of collaborations with academic institutes.

Considering the importance of developing solution on SME live problems through industry- academia student projects, CICU representative announced to create revolving fund for supporting development of solutions by academia.

Primarily, upfront financial assistance will be provided to student teams for development of prototype solution for respective SME problem.