Experts to pour in feedback on Bantala Centre of innovation

Kolkata: The state Information and Technology (IT) department has sought feedback from thought leaders and experts on how they should proceed with the proposed Centre of Innovation at Bantala. The primary input in this regard will come by January31. The construction of the Centre has started already on one acre of land inside the IT complex at Bantala.

"We held a brainstorming session with many thought leaders and experts from IIT, IIM, Calcutta University, Assocham, PricewaterhouseCoopers etc and discussed how we should proceed in this regard. All of them were requested to submit their inputs separately by January 31," a senior official of the state Information Technology (IT) department said.

It may be mentioned that the construction work of the Centre of Innovation is going on in full swing and is expected to be commissioned within 2018. The building will be four-storied and will have a conference room and state of-the-art plug and play infrastructure for Innovation. The official said that the goal of the Centre of Innovation is to produce patents or Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and upscale knowledge in emerging areas like block-chain, fintech, robotics etc. "Our objective is to network with industry and academic institutions by video workshops, webinars, web, linked-in, apps etc as well as actual workshops. The task would be to invite successful patent holders and mentors to handhold aspiring young innovators and help them with industry problems and mentors," the official added.

The Centre would provide "rent-free space" to innovators for churning out big ideas and designing innovative models.