Incubator at Kongu Engineering College

We landed at the campus of Kongu Engineering College on the afternoon of 6th April 2007, being driven in a Tempo traveler which was big enough for 4 of us. On our way, we interacted with the two students who had come to pick us up from Coimbatore and tried to get as much information as possible about the college and the students. As we were to be there only for a couple of hours, we decided to present about LTSP and Linux High Availability.

When we went to the campus, we were really amazed to see that it was almost a township within. We had our lunch at the guest house and was accompanied by the H.O.D of I.T department to the seminar Hall. CSE and IT departments shares the huge building called as IT park. We had our talk in the Seminar Hall 2, which was enough to seat a 100. After we closed our session and had an hour of personal interaction with a few people, we were taken for a tour around the campus. We visited the labs, all equipped with latest computers and facilities, and to the server room which was otherwise “administrators only” area.

After finishing the initial tour around the IT Park, there was something more interesting in the same building. Located on the basement of the IT park is the Technology Business Incubator, known as TBI. TBI is a joint venture of Kongu Engineering College and Department of Science and Technology, Govt of India. This projects enjoys a funding of Rs.4 crores for providing infrastructural support for budding entrepreneurs.

What’s there in TBI is technical/hardware infrastructure for manufacturing products in the domains such as Embedded Systems, Digital Signal Processing and Electronic Card Design, Assembly, Testing and Repair. These facilities are available for students and entrepreneurs under a nominal fee. This includes access to state-of-the-art tools and computers to design, manufacture, test and research products in the above said domains.

The idea is like this, any entrepreneur having a requirement for an industrially demanded product can make use of this facility. He can bring in his own workforce or make use of the student resources in the college. Similarly, students who have brilliant ideas can make use of the facility to bring out their own products and make business. The end product which gets developed using the facility will lie with the original creator to whom the idea belongs. Thus, the TBI will not claim any right over the products that gets developed using it, rather will support every passionate entrepreneur by rendering him all possible infrastructure and resources.

Thus it gives an opportunity for students to get exposure to industry and the industry to interact and make use of the student resource. the following products have successfully been developer in the TBI, Power electronic controllers, temperature controllers, electronic tagging of book-like objects, electronic control panel for scrubber drier machines, Universal power regulator for DC Motor, controller for automatic bell ringing system and last but not the least, bus ticket vending machine.

This is a wonderful endeavor by Dept of Science and Technology by funding a project which is the very requirement in an academic environment. This also sound similar to the purpose of NRCFOSS, which is also a Govt of India funded project. We also aim to create entrepreneurs rather individual developers and contributors in the software and IT industry.

Any young and passionate entrepreneurs looking for infrastructure facilities for developing their first product can approach the TBI-KEC. Visit them at TBI-KEC.

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