Thiruvananthapuram (The Hawk): On Sunday, the Cochin Shipyard Ltd. (CSL) announced that it would collaborate with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras to support maritime startup companies.
In a statement, the CSL said that this programme will assist young, skilled businesspeople in developing goods or services with funding from the shipyard. This is a component of the "USHUS" startup engagement programme, which the CSL introduced to complement the Center's effort to encourage marine startups.
Deepu Surendran, general manager of CSL, and Prof. V. Kamakoti, director of the IIT-Madras, inked the agreement. IIT-Madras will serve as an implementation partner and will offer the startups incubation, mentorship, and training, according to the release.
To find startups for funding under the seed fund scheme, pilot grants, and equity investment schemes, applications will be sought online twice a year.
According to the statement, the firms chosen under the programme must focus on product and service innovation, improvement, and development as well as implement a scalable business strategy with a high potential for revenue generating, job creation, and wealth creation.
The management of the maritime industry is automating and presenting intriguing problems to the creative minds, according to Prof. Kamakoti.
He added that the collaboration with CSL would produce a number of ground-breaking Atmanirbhar solutions.
Madhu Nair, the managing director of CSL, announced that a corpus of Rs 50 crore had been released for the USHUS start-up programme. Startups would receive equity capital at the scale-up stage as well as seed grants of Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore for prototyping.
(Inputs from Agencies)
