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UAS-B teams up with C-CAMP to set up dedicated Agri Innovation Centre
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Friday, 18 August, 2017, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, Bengaluru
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The University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore (UAS-B) and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) has now set up a dedicated Agri Innovation Centre.
While C-CAMP is India’s premier bio-incubator and innovation hub, UAS-B is one of the leading agricultural universities in the country.
The facility was inaugurated by H Shivanna, vice-chancellor, UAS-B, and M Maheshwar Rao, secretary, Department of Agriculture.
It is located within the GKVK campus, and is housed in the Department of Biotechnology, UAS-B.
The Centre aims to identify the key issues impacting the growth of agriculture. It will promote entrepreneurship in the agri-sector, leading to innovation, economic development and job creation.
In sync with the government of India’s Start-up India initiative, it will provide state-of-the-art infrastructure and scientific, technical and business mentorship to promising agri-startups to help translate their ideas into successful ventures.
The other objectives of the Centre are to bring about transformational changes in the agri-business to foster entrepreneurship among agri-graduates, augment farm incomes, create more subsidiary agri-enterprises and help the rural poor by adding to their agricultural resources.
“Incubation centres are becoming instrumental in transferring the potential scientific discoveries into products, leading to economic development,” said Shivanna.
“To bring in the visible impact of agri entrepreneurs, the focus should be on technologies that were driven by the leads obtained by scientific discoveries,” he added.
“The start-ups that have incubated at academic institutions like ours did well, signifying the need for hand holding of the start-up entrepreneurs by academia,” Shivanna said.
“Besides the incubation centres should offer the required infrastructure and directions needed for the successful implementation of the start-up programmes,” he added.
The proposed centre will be a virtual incubation centre, with the participation of several departments or research centres of the university.
A novel feature is to function as a knowledge base of agricultural technologies with commercial potential and as a repository of biological material for entrepreneurs to develop innovative products and processes.
In partnership with C-CAMP, it will also have the support of other bio-cluster institutions like the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and InSTEM.
“The formal coming together is bound to increase such joint activities and pave the way for new enthusiasm in agri-based innovation on our campus,” said Satyajit Mayor, director, NCBS.
Taslimarif Saiyed, chief executive officer and director, C-CAMP, said, “Agriculture is an area that has not been addressed to the extent that biomedical and healthcare issues have been in India, and poses a tremendous opportunity in terms of innovation-based entrepreneurship.”
“Agri-related problems are not as clearly articulated and discussed in society compared to biomedical problems to attract innovators attention,” he added.
“C-CAMP, through this centre, plans to address this very need and nurture innovative ideas that will improve agri-health and other issues and help with the validation and deployment of these innovations,” Saiyed said.
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