A meeting was held on 29th March, 2018 at Senate Hall, PEC to discuss the prospective initiatives to be undertaken for International Incubator Corridor. The agenda for this meeting was to bring together like-minds to brainstorm on the thematic areas and work out the Triangular International Corridor of UK, India and China in order to establish and sustain an international platform for innovation and entrepreneurship while creating international entrepreneurship mind in youth.
The meeting started with a welcome speech by Dr. Manoj K Arora, Director PEC where he shared the visions of PEC and CRIKC to participate in International Entrepreneurship Corridor. He emphasised his commitment to lead incubation efforts at CRIKC as well as at city level. Subsequently, Dr. Arun Grover, Vice Chancellor, PU and President CRIKC pointed out that PEC is the best place to undertake this initative and bring things forward to building concrete ideas.
Dr. Hardev Singh, Chair-Trustee of The Haydn Green Foundation, UK shared his proposal and mentioned that he aims to engage with India at three levels, namely: Academic Engagement, City-to-city Engagement and Entrepreneurship/Industry Engagement. He further added that starting from China (Ningbo), UK (Nottingham) and India (Chandigarh), HGIIIEC(Haydn Green Institute International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Corridor) Phase I would be for 3 years and it would facilitate 3 levels of interactions on innovation and entrepreneurship across 3 countries.
Various delegates participated in the meeting including Directors of CRIKC(Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster) Institutions and their nominees, Industry Experts, Chandigarh Administration, academicians, faculty and students.
During the Discussion Session, various themes were proposed by the dignitaries from which the best suited could be opted for taking things ahead.
- Sustainable Agriculture : Er. Rakesh Sharma, Adjunct Faculty PEC, who himself is involved in four major projects reiterated that as India is basically an agricultural economy, there is a need to work in the domain of Sustainable Agriculture. There is a need to venture into biotechnology not only to provide technological solutions for increasing agricultural productivity but to work the whole chain.
- Solar Energy: Er. Rajinder Kaura, CMD Bergen Group India, who is working towards enhancing solar energy for electrification of villages was of the opinion that the energy could be utilised to provide light during night (via LED bulbs) to grow veggies in half the time. Therefore, we could initiate things in that area. Mr. Arun Grover, Vice Chancellor, PU added that energy sector could also initiate work in the area of waste management as this is a pressing issue for the Chandigarh management.
- Bio-Medical devices : These devices are always in demand and it would be useful to work in the area.
- Pharmacy : It was laid that another area where work could be carried out jointly was pharmacy. As pharmacy was the key strength of University of Nottingham and the institutions in tri-city like PGI, NIPER etc could give valuable inputs.
- Integrated project on farmer Industrialisation : It was highlighted that today we need to bring together university, farmer, government and student (working in the capacity of industrialist) to advice the farmer how to grow in the given facilities /resources provided by the rest of them.
Areas of collaboration
As per the HGIIIEC Phase I, The Haydn Green Foundation wants to collaborate through
- University Programmes
- International CPD programmes
- Dual/Joint Degree Programmes
- Student/Staff Exchange and Joint Research
- Joint CSR activities
- Industry / Entrepreneurship Engagement : International Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition/Bootcamp/soft-landing platforms for start-ups as well as small and medium size companies will be jointly developed by all partners.
- City-to-City Interactions Economic, social and cultural interactions will be facilitated by means of business summits, expos, visits and other events to be held at partner cities in turns.
The first version of Ingenuity International Innoavation and Entrepreneurship Competition 2018 was proposed that aims at creating entrepreneurship culture in youth and facilitating international business and collaborations while promoting innovation and economic growth of the three countries. It will be one of the very first cross-border entrepreneurship competition. Its theme being "Smart City-Intelligent Economy", it will be focusing on five sectors viz. advanced technologies, healthcare, digital economy, financial services and creative industry.
PEC will be leading the CRIKC in this initiative and would be expected to perform some resonponsibilites including designing and organising activities incorporating university resources as the fundamentals of HGIIIEC, opening innovation funding to support the entrepreneurship activities of HGIIIEC, attracting the policy and funding support from the Ningbo/Indian government to support HGIIIEC and providing physical presence of HGIIIEC and support its daily operations when needed.
