Dont throw away that college project

The “Techpedia Empire”,as newly-appointed Managing Director Hiranmay Mahanta,who recently graduated from the Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT) in Surat,calls it,involves 4.3 lakh students from the IITs to polytechnics and ITIs,60,000 professors and lecturers to guide them,and has a growth rate of 20,000 new projects per month.

Within its own realm,the portal acts like a Google of engineering subjects: if you search for,say,projects that deal with solar energy,it throws up 327 results. For those involving chemicals,it would throw up 1,081 results and so on.

Techpedia is based on a simple formula: take students’ projects,paste the abstracts on the website,provide contact details of the students so the industry can reach them,and appoint mentors and guides to help these students in further developing and partnering with the industries. So far,about 10 projects have been picked up industries,besides numerous inquiries.

One of these is a trio of educational computer games developed by Anuj Tewari,an alumnus of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT) at Gandhinagar. The games have been identified by SHARDA,the Corporate Social Responsibility wing of Ahmedabad-based Arvind Mills that runs three centres in the city aimed at enhancing computer literacy among municipal school students.

Vita Green,a snack-food firm,has identified a number of studies on preservation and seasoning of snacks from the University Institute of Chemical Technology,Mumbai,written by students Mahesh Hatekar,Roji Waghmare and Doshi Vijal.

One of the most popular projects on Techpedia,incidentally,is the first to be listed on the portal: SVNIT third-year electrical engineering students Rujal Angadia and Maulik Gandhi’s LED light project,in which two firms from China have reportedly shown interest. “We want to work in India though,” Angadia said. The duo has already come up with two types of LED lights,both of which are about 40 per cent cheaper than the ones currently available in the market. Angadia has just completed a Rs 1.5 lakh,conference room lighting contract and is currently in talks with Essar Power Limited and Surat Municipal Corporation.

Techpedia declined to share details of some of the projects picked up by industry since patents and companies’ wishes had to be taken account,Mahanta said. The portal has also recently signed an agreement with the Gujarat National Law University in Gandhinagar to address the issue of patents and Intellectual Property Rights.

Under this,a team of law students specialising in IPR would attempt to file at least 1,000 patents per year for the students listed in Techpedia. The young lawyers would get two-three per cent equity from the licensing fee,plus get credits as part of their curriculum. This in turn would help reduce the cost of filing patents for the engineering students–while patents cost roughly Rs 20,000,lawyer fees usually amount to Rs 1 lakh.

To make sure that the projects are picked up by industry,the portal is part of the National Mentor Network headed by R A Mashelkar,former director-general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and a virtual incubator for which the National Science and Technology Development Board has pledged its support. Apart from these,Gujarat Technological University,Punjab Technical University and The National Institute of Technology at Surathkal,Karnataka,have circulated memos about the portal to the colleges affiliated under them.

To help students develop projects relevant to industry,Professor Gupta wrote to industry associations across the country,following which many of them have responded by asking their members to provide their Industry Defined Problems (IDPs) or the solutions they need. Industry associations like the Electronics Industries Association of India,Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry,All India Association of Industries and Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India have issued circulars to all their members to provide IDPs to Techpedia. So far,34 IDPs have been submitted to the website.

Mahanta said a number of meetings with various industry associations are lined up to discuss expansion of the portal. “The 1 lakh projects on the website constitute only 4 per cent of all the projects since India’s Independence,” he said.