Maker Village Kochi is a role model fit for application in a wide range of fields including high-tech and deep-tech to agriculture, healthcare, environment, automation, business and industry, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Communications and HRD Sanjay Dhotre said.

Hailing the country’s largest hardware incubator as the only successful hardware start-up venture by the Union Government in association with a State, he said during a visit to Maker Village that the four-year-old establishment has made progress usually achieved in a quarter century.

Describing the Industries’ relation with Maker Village as “symbiotic”, Dhotre said such tie-ups can help the country develop “horizontally, and not just vertically”. He wants to replicate this model elsewhere, so that the entire country gets benefit out of this model. Maker Village, which functions under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has Indian Institute of Information Technology Kerala as the host institute.

The Minister said Maker Village had the capacity to engage in improving the country’s defence ecosystem. The suggestion comes four days after the Union government selected Maker Village as a partner for its iDEX programme so as to create solutions for the armed services.

The Minister also called upon Maker Village Kochi to involve BSNL and MTNL in enabling the two state-owned communications companies develop products of cutting-edge technology.

Introducing the innovative devices, Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair pointed out that the establishment had by far incubated 75 start-ups and applied for 48 patents of which six have been sanctioned. He also submitted two proposals to the minister: one for the creation of a 5G district and the other an advanced manufacturing facility for Industry 4.0.

M Sivasankar, Secretary, IT, said Kerala’s hardware start-ups have a “huge problem” in raising working capital, for which they needed grants from the Centre. Taking cue from the minister’s call for horizontal growth, he said the country wanted more such establishments in tier-2 cities, with Kochi having come up with a successful model.