To help Indian students pick up the right technology to learn and build products for the future in the fast emerging market of virtual reality, the School of Innovation, a programme by the Startup Village Collective (SV.CO), India’s first digital incubator, has collaborated with Facebook.

The collaboration will help engineering students build their virtual reality (VR) ideas into next-generation, globally marketable products and services.

“First students will have to choose the idea, then they need to understand the importance of the product and use the effective tools to come out with such product,” said Suma Sundararajan, Vice-President (Operations and Partnerships), SV.CO.

The objective of the School of Innovation is to encourage engineering students to make breakthrough products with the help of new technology for fulfilling the needs of the society.

The students are guided and mentored by an SV.CO team, which also impart skills and learning, added Sundarajan.

“The VR platform, in throwing open uncharted areas, provides us just that opportunity. And we are happy to have partners in Facebook which recognise the potential of bright 18-22-year olds in Indian colleges in working wonders with the new technology,” said SV.CO Chairman, Sanjay Vijayakumar.

#StartinCollege campaign

The programme, which began this month, will continue till January 2019. A total of 10 colleges will be selected via the #StartinCollege campaign. The selected teams will work with the SV.CO for six months where they will work online as well as in-person on their idea, build a low and high-fidelity prototype and then launch it for consumers.

Later, the successful teams will present their product in front of a leadership panel on demo day to be conducted by Facebook India office.

Satyajeet Singh, Head of Platform, Partnerships, Facebook India and South Asia, said: “The School of Innovation programme is a step forward in realising our vision of building an ecosystem that inspires innovation and empowers young talent to build products using emerging technologies such as VR that will shape the future of businesses”.