DST secy bemoans poor entrepreneurship culture in rural varsities

Hyderabad: Dr Srivari Chandrasekhar, secretary of the department of science & technology (DST), said that the ambience in state universities located in rural areas was not conducive for fostering entrepreneurship.

“The students are very bright, but the ambience they get is unacceptable. I told the Vice Chancellor that it was his responsibility to seek funds from the DST. I request IIT-H director Dr B.S. Murty to connect with rural state universities to help foster entrepreneurship among students,” he said.

He was speaking at the Innovation Day 2023 event at IIT-Hyderabad on Saturday, after visiting the Telangana University in Nizamabad the previous day and meeting 200 PG students there.

Raising concerns over the closure of several start-ups, he said in 2021 alone, about 14,600 start-ups had shut in the country and said that along with focusing on incubating start-ups, there was also an urgent need to control the closure ratio too. “Else, after five years, job creators will turn to job seekers,” he said.

IIT-H director Dr Murty, meanwhile, said that innovation “was in the blood of students and faculty of IITH.”

“By incubating over 100 start-ups which created over 1,000 jobs in the past four to five years, people, a decade down the line, won’t measure the institute by its students’ pay packages, but rather by the number of jobs created,” Murty said.

A total of seven enablers, 15 researchers’ innovations and 15 start-up innovations on themes of environmental care were displayed on the day.

Among the innovations on display was a ‘smart wearable pregnancy monitoring device’, developed by a Medtech firm. The device can monitor foetal and maternal heart rates, uterine contractions and temperature in real-time, from the second trimester.

Another innovation on display was an antibacterial and antifungal spray for intimate wear. As per the developer, Guru Shankar, 75 per cent of women suffer from fungal infections at least once but 50 per cent remain untreated out of shame and guilt. The product prevents infection using a formulation of herbal essential oils encapsulated in PLA (polylactic acid) microcapsules.

Co-founder, group chief executive and vice-chairman of Fractal Analytics, Srikanth Velamakanni, and the chair of the IITH’s board of governors, Dr B.V.R. Mohan Reddy also attended the event.

Some other innovations on display:

> Affordable burn wound patch at the patient's bedside for burn care

> Affordable kit for detection of vaginal infections/CIN/cervical cancer

> Biotechnology-based sewage treatment systems

· Building cinematography drones with a focus on core drone technologies