The CoE is the first of its kind in India which is an immersion of innovation, creativity and new business development for augmentation of the efficiency in all the business verticals, service sector & also in Government operations/projects leveraging emerging technologies like AI, ML, IoT, BigData etc. The CoE is expected to play a vital role in bringing disruptive technologies/solutions & products to help increase efficiency in the said areas.

Innovation and Developement Lab

The innovation & Development lab will be equipped with range of network, compute & storage elements, developmental tools/software & platforms that are required by start-ups focusing on smart manufacturing, Smart Farming, Smart Energy, Home & Office Automation, Smart Water, Connected Transportation, Whether Monitoring, Smart Hospital, Smart Security and Intelligent Asset Monitoring. To begin with CoE would have tools/equipment to support start-ups working on Smart Manufacturing, Smart Energy, Smart Water and Home & Office Automation and based on the demand the required tools/equipment will be provisioned to address other areas.

Incubation  facility

The facility comprised of well-furnished & air conditioned rooms to accommodate 100+ workstations. Besides this, facility will have Board/ Conference rooms for the business discussions and a training room. It will have necessary power back-up, structured high speed LAN, Voice & Data connectivity, Server Room etc.

Training facility

As training programme is one of the important service offered by CoE, and for this a well-furnished training room with required A/v will be created to accommodate number of participants. Centre of excellence zone where various equipment like PLC, PAC, wireless sensors, automation controllers, IoT platforms will be available connected to various actuators and sensors for trainees to have hands on learning experience.

SERVICES OF CoE & INCENTIVES

Technical support, mentoring, seed funding & market assistance to the 100 startups (90 physically and 10 virtually) over a period of five years for creating technically-sound and commercially-viable solutions for efficiency augmentation.

Access to the Innovation & Development lab and onsite technical/application engineering support to the start-ups. Advise to government departments and private sector companies to design and implement digital solutions to augment the efficiency of their operations. Training, sensitization and capacity building of Karnataka government/Central Govt/PSU/ officials, private sector companies, students and others. The training programmes will be designed to enrich the skill-sets to the employees, students, government  staff, start-ups & industry in the areas of IoT, Cloud, AI/ML, Big Data etc. The trainings will be conducted by the experienced trainers, who would be identified during the implementation stage of the CoE. Target beneficiaries will include engineering graduates, working staff of industry and also the government staff from Karnataka who are working on government projects such as industry & commence, smart cities, e-Governance etc. The expected training outcomes includes the following:

• • • Application of knowledge and skills in industries for increased productivity
    • Higher labor productivity
    • Increase employability rate for the students.
    • Improved processes & optimization of the resources for the industries.
    • Adaption of the latest technologies in automation for government projects

FINANCIAL INCENTIVES TO START-UPS

A. Seed Funding:
The investment committee will conduct due-diligence at the early stage of the product development to identify the potential start-ups and decide to invest seed funding. The seed funding up to Rs 10 Lakh per start-ups will be considered.In addition, CoE will also facilitate meetings with other VCs to enable start-ups to get more opportunity to raise funds.

B. Mentoring:
CoE will have pool of mentoring professionals from industry/academia who would provide mentoring on technology & business. Efforts will be made to link either one mentor or group of mentors to each start-up depending upon requirements. This mentoring session will be closely associated with level of start-up’s requirements in terms of pitching the ideation/PoC into product and their technological aspects & commercially viability. The mentor will also guide to secure investments from venture capital funds and/ or other funding agencies. The cost associated with organizing such mentoring will be absorbed by CoE itself, which means mentoring sessions will be free for start-ups.

C. Market Assistance:
This is the stage when the start-ups are ready with marketable products/services. This stage is very crucial from the point of gaining momentum in the market, to increase the sales and generate revenues.The CoE will organize events to help incubatees network and showcase their technologies, prototypes and products to prospective clients and users by inviting them to its premises and /or by facilitating participation of the incubatees in trade and technology events in the State and outside. Marketing incentives to the potential start-ups once during their tenure with CoE, will be considered in the form of 50% reimbursement of marketing expenditure for participation in domestic/ international conferences/ exhibition, subject to:- Rs 1.0 lakh or 50% of the cost (whichever is lesser) for participating in domestic/ international conferences /exhibitions.