Igniting Innovation. Comed ‘Kares’ to improve students’ employability

At a time when co-working spaces are the order of the day in the start-up world, Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (ComedK) has taken initiative to set up co-building spaces for students from private engineering colleges in the state to improve skills and employability.

In October 2022, it established eight ‘ComedKares Innovation Hubs’ — four in Bengaluru and in Mysuru, Mangaluru, Belagavi and Kalaburagi — to unleash the potential of creative minds in engineering colleges in Karnataka.

P Muralidhar, CEO, ComedKares, told businessline that these hubs further supplement the experiential learning focus that has been mentioned in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The objective of ComedKares is to provide community-centric education to students and to foster their employability and entrepreneurship abilities.

The reason behind starting these hubs, he says, is that though nearly 14 lakh students pass out every year in India the quality of some of these students is an issue. While top-tier engineering colleges such as IIT, NIT, and other private institutions possess state-of-the-art infrastructure for laboratory and research and attract good faculty, the situation is not so in many engineering colleges in the bottom tier. As a result, the quality of the students coming out of many such colleges is not good, which in turn, impacts employability.

To help them become better equipped with skills, innovation hubs provide state-of-the-art infrastructure and mentoring to them.

Benefits galore

On the benefits to colleges, he said some colleges may not invest much in their lab infrastructure. However, they can use the infrastructure of these innovation hubs. ComedKares does not charge anything for them. However, ComedKares charges a nominal ₹1,500 a course for students, he said, adding, the programme duration offered by ComedKares incurs an expenditure of around ₹1 lakh anywhere outside.

Upskilling needs

On the benefits to students, he said all the skills imparted in these innovation hubs focus on emerging technologies and are in accordance with NEP 2020. Students get training programmes in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), design thinking, Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics. Students have to do 30 hours of theory and 30 hours of practicals in the innovation hubs, he said.

Explaining this, he said suppose if the first semester is going on in the college, the innovation hubs run programmes parallel to the college semester. The programmes are conducted in the evening, and it will be two hours per week. “It is supplementary to the college curriculum, and not instead of,” he said.

Apart from this, students also visit local communities to find problems and work on those problems. “If the students get an idea for a technology solution to any problem, we will help and mentor them on the solution and they can build the prototype as the machinery is there in the hubs till prototyping. It is more hands-on as per the NEP 2020,” Muralidhar said. At this point in time, around 2,200 students are taking the benefit of these innovation hubs across Karnataka.

Nurturing innovation

He said students from ComedKares Innovation Hubs participated in a challenge conducted by IIT Indore recently. The team of Kalaburagi Innovation Hub won first place in that challenge, and the Mangaluru team won third place.

Describing his learnings at Kalaburagi Innovation Hub of ComedKares, Sunny Kumar, a student from Shetty Institute of Technology in Kalaburagi, told businessline that it helped him learn new things in robotics.

Stating that his team presented a soccer board for robots at the challenge, he said the facilities at the hub gave him a new perspective on robotics helping his team to win the challenge at Indore.

Roopalaxmi, Manager of Mangaluru Innovation Hub, said it is heartening to witness the enthusiasm and creativity of students who are taking advantage of opportunities provided by ComedKares to build prototypes and implement their ideas.

On the selection of independent locations for establishing the innovation hubs, Muralidhar said many engineering colleges offered their premises for hosting the innovation hubs. “The challenge is that if you set it up in one college, students from other colleges will not come. That is why we set them up in a neutral place,” he said. Of the eight centres, three are in malls and five are in independent locations.

With skills becoming a major aspect of employability in today’s world, initiatives like this are likely to provide a new lifeline to students from the bottom tier of engineering institutions.