Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, in association with NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Defence, organised an outreach programme, iDEX, at AGBI (Atal Great Lakes Balachandran Incubation) centre, within the campus.
The platform iDEX has been introduced to help create functional prototypes of products/technologies relevant for national security (prototyping), and spur fast-moving innovation in the India’s defence sector.
Ecosystem of technological development
Key note speaker, Dayanand, Program Executive Officer, Ministry of Defence, said: “iDex initiative provides grants and funding to carry out research and development for defence purposes. We aim to create an ecosystem of technological development with academia, start-ups, MSMEs, and individual innovators. Our objective is to facilitate development of new, indigenised, innovative technology for the defence and aerospace sectors, and to create a culture of engagement with innovators, whoever can serve our purpose. This outreach programme is to inform you that you too can participate, provide solutions, and take the opportunity to serve the country.”
He briefed the gathering about initiatives such as the SPARK (Support for prototype and research kick-start) grant that the DISC (Defence India start-up challenges) offers to selected start-ups aimed to catalyse open innovation.
Saurabh Kumar Chaubey, CEO, AGBI, spoke about how it was the focus of the AGBI to conduct such events that bring out innovation management.