Kerala's Maker Village to create solutions for Defence-Andhravilas

Kerala's Maker Village to create solutions for Defence

Delhi/Kochi, Nov 12 - The Defence Innovation Organisation (DIO) under the Ministry of Defence on Tuesday chose Kerala's Maker Village, here as a partner for its iDEX programme that pursues an innovative defence ecosystem.

iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) gives innovators the strength to serve India's defence needs by funding and hand-holding them.

Maker Village CEO, Prasad Balakrishnan Nair received the memorandum of understanding (MoU) from his DIO counterpart Sanjay Jaju, who is also the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Defence Production at a function held in Delhi on Tuesday.

iDEX, launched in April last year, primarily strives for an ecosystem fostering innovation and technology in the areas of defence and aerospace.

Start-ups are among the enterprises made eligible under the programme that gives grant and other support for R&D solutions of potential adoption.

Nair described the iDEX selection as a milestone for the pioneering start-up initiative founded in February 2015 under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, with Indian Institute of Information Technology as the host institute.

"The agreement gives us an opportunity to join more defence-related endeavours. iDEX provides the selected start-ups access to the defence markets besides grants of up to Rs1.5 crore. It will encourage young entrepreneurs from our ecosystem to propose new ideas and platforms that benefit the armed services," said Nair.

Around 75 start-ups with cutting-edge technologies have been incubated at Maker Village, which functions at the Integrated Start-up Complex in Kalamassery, near Kochi.

--IANS

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(IANS)

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