Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, Basar understands that the quality technical education among students would not be honed to required standards unless there is a strong Academia – Industry interaction, says Dr A Ashok, Secretary & Commissioner, Board of Intermediate Education, Government of Telangana and Vice Chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT), Basar, Telangana, in an interview with Sudheer Goutham of Elets News Network (ENN).
Give us a brief overview of innovation, incubation and entrepreneurship related programmes started at RGUKT.
At Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT), our vision is to nurture world class professional engineers by imparting quality education and transforming rural youth into world class engineers. To achieve this, students are required to be trained in the skills relevant as per the industry demands. As the job market demands latest advancements in technology, innovation in education is our most preferred approach for conducting any course.
How significant is the role of incubation centres for preparing global citizens? Please describe about various incubation related activities in RGUKT.
Incubation Centres have a major role in higher education. These centres help students in developing a diversified thinking that helps in finding a more effective and innovative solution to problems. At Incubation Centres in the State, we follow the process; innovate, incubate, conceptualise the idea, scale up the idea and then mass production.
Also Read: RGUKT Incubating Industry-Academia Collaborations
At RGUKT, Basar, a Japanese company “SafeTracehub” operating in the premises of its incubation centre, we will soon be seeing more companies from around the world signing moUs to set up innovation labs and incubation centres.
In line with Government of India’s Startup India initiative, how is RGUKT encouraging entrepreneurship among its students?
We encourage students for entrepreneurship. We support students in setting up their start-ups as it will help them to realise their dreams rather than being in a job and realising others’ dreams. moreover, a successful start-up also paves the way for employment to others.
Recently, our students have come up with non Invasive Glucometer which is a cheaper way to test the sugar for diabetic patients. So, in this way we are helping students to innovate and bring their ideas into reality.
Many of our students visit NASA every year and grab first and second prizes. So, we not only encourage innovative ideas but teach in a way that students are nurtured with the skills to support new ideas. We organise techno festival every year where students from other universities as well come with new ideas. In the recent festival, we have received many solutions related to the day-to-day problems in Agriculture and health sectors.
How is RGUKT catering to the needs of rural youth?
Students in RGUKT are selected on merit basis. most of them are from middle-class or economically weaker sections of the society. These students are very meritorious and we are turning them into world-class professionals.
As most of our students are from rural background, they are well aware of the day-to-day problems in rural life. We introduce them to the new innovations or technologies that help them to solve any such problems. our students developed a software through which farmers will know the different prices prevailing in different markets for a particular agricultural product. It helped the farmers to get the most profitable deal for their agricultural products.
Along with that, we also helped nirmal handicrafts to develop software and website so that the organisation can enhance their market reach.
