Aero Innovation and Skill Centre to mentor start-ups, students to open on July 16

Khan added, “As many as 15-20 start-ups will be a part of AISC as of now. Start-ups and entrepreneurs, who are interested in giving wings to their dreams of doing something in the aerospace sector, can use our expertise and facility.”

Former Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) scientist Srinivasan K V said, “A panel at AISC will shortlist the start-ups and students based on the ideas they come up with. They will then mentor them. The mentors will be both serving and retired officials of government PSUs like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and DRDO and industry experts working in the MNCs.”

Srinivasan added, “We will facilitate the interaction between the start-ups and the defence agencies. Drones will be one of our major focus areas since its application in medical services, agriculture and security is vast. It is estimated that approximately 1 to 1.5 million jobs will be created in the Aerospace and Defence sector over the next 10 years.”

A statement issued by AISC read, “AISC has joined hands with many MNCs and OEMs like ALTAIR, SIEMENS, ANSYS, HAL, DRDO and other academic institutions to develop advanced skill courses, provide aspirants access to advanced software tools and technologies and exposure to industry grade projects to bridge the skill gap between the Industries and Academia. Long-term growth prospects for the Aerospace & Defence industry remain strong. The space sector and technological developments, such as advanced air mobility, hypersonic, electric propulsion, and hydrogen-powered aircraft, are likely to drive future growth for the industry.”

Khan said AISC has all the facilities which can be accessed by MSMEs, start-ups and academia. “AISC’s vision is to enable India to become the innovation hub in the emerging technologies of the Aviation and Aerospace sectors through democratisation of innovation, conceptualisation of ideas, design standardisation and support, proof of concept and prototyping of the ideas by involving academia and industries. It will act as an innovation lab, incubator for start-ups in aviation and aerospace technologies as well as impart advanced skill-training programmes required by the start-ups to achieve their goals.”