Ericsson to support up to three projects of students for incubation

Stockholm headquartered communication technology multinational Ericsson will support up to three projects for incubation at IIT approved technology business incubators, announces Paolo Colella, head of region India at Ericsson in an event at IIT Delhi.

Students from fourteen premier engineering institutes including IITs, IISc, IIITs, BHU and BITS Pilani, have been invited to submit their innovation projects for second edition of Ericsson Innovation Awards.

According to company official, Ericsson seeks student innovations in emerging areas of information communication technologies (ICTs) such as web design, cloud computing, storage and networking, human-machine interface, embedded and hardware system design, MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output), machine-to-machine communication, Internet of Things (IoT), software-defined networking (SDN), open source, signal processing, graphics and visualisation.

Proposals from the IITs across Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Roorkee, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Mandi, Hyderabad as well as IISc Bangalore, BITS Pilani, IIIT Gwalior, IIIT Delhi, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), following the preliminary screening phase at their respective institutes, will go through a shortlisting process, informs Ericsson.

By February 12, 10-12 student proposals will be shortlisted and thereafter, they would be given financial support and two-month time—till April 2016—for developing the proof of concept (PoC) or initial prototype for their Projects.

Out of 10-12 projects, up to 3 projects will be selected at an event to be organised at IIT Delhi in May this year.

The selection of the projects will be based on criteria such as degree of innovation, feasibility, usability, relevance, time to market and the overall impact to industry. Each winning projects will get Rs 13 Lakhs financial support from Ericsson, states Colella.

The jury will comprise of senior members from Ericsson, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), an industry interface organisation of IIT Delhi and eminent industry experts.

Swedish company has increased the award money from 10 Lakhs in 2015 to Rs 13 Lakhs in 2016. Similarly, participating institutes have also gone up from seven to fourteen.

“As a company we take pride in our culture of innovation, we are looking at giving a further boost to the spirit of entrepreneurship thriving in the India through this initiative,” says Colella.

Last year, Paras Batra, a student from IIT Delhi, who won the award has emerged as a successful entrepreneur with his own start-up and smart jewelry app called ‘Safer’.

Ericsson Innovation Awards India were launched in partnership with FITT last year.

According to Anil Wali, managing director, FITT, the basic idea is to help and encourage student to not only come forward with their innovation ideas but also help them translate those ideas into viable businesses.