Techpedia :A new model of innovation involving
Young University students & Professors for
developing innovations for informal and formal sectors.
“How to link the problems of informal sector and
micro-and small industries with technology
students, the case of www.techpedia.in” at SRISTI
India as an Emerging Young Nation
Bringing out 2.2 million Technology Graduates per year
More than half of India's population is younger than the age of 25 and the
entry of this group into the working population over the next few decades
is expected to spur India's economic growth.
50,000 software engineer, 0.05% of our Indian
population contributed 10% of our export : 9.7 billion
US dollars in 2010
Networking Compassionate –Collaborative
and Creative Young Minds
Creativity
Collaboration
Compassion
2.2 million Graduate Technical
Students Per year in India
10 months efforts by each student for
solving real life issues
Harnessing 10 million human months of
efforts per year
Techpedia Aims
•
•
•
•
•
Promotion of originality among technology students by making it impossible for
them to do what has been done before. This will be possible only when they can
find out what has been done before. Techpedia. In already has 1.4 lac technology
projects done by 3.5 lac students from more than 500 colleges in India
Connecting the technical students with the problems of informal, unorganized
sector & grassroots innovators and MSMEs for affordable solution
To harness collaborative potential of students across disciplines and colleges to
solve persistent problems of our country in formal and informal sector through
(a)Explore kho -kho model (relay) of product development (b) Creating real-time
online NMN (National Mentoring Network) to harness skills, insights and
experience of senior tech experts for mentoring young students
Developing high tech capabilities through network platforms that become a hub for
high tech outsourcing for the world in future
Promoting both IPR protected and open source technologies and eventually
develop techpedia.in into an online virtual incubator
1. Promotion of originality among technology
students through www.techpedia.in
website
database
Created Innovation ecosystem involving 1 million
technology/professional Students in various States
( involving existing universities and industry clusters)
Discrete social
innovations
Innovation
Networking/Mindset
Innovation
Districts/Clusters/
Sankuls
Mining the young technology minds for developing not only discrete
socially viable Innovations but also a culture of “Samvedana” /Compassion
Driven innovation pedagogy.
2. Harness collaborative potential of students
Case of Techpedia-GTU
Institutionalizing innovation spirit in academia for solving socio-technical issues
502 institutions
3.5 lac students
19,000 Professors
8,000 MSMEs
5 lac human months per
academic year
In 25 Innovation clusters
To solve the issues of
BOP
2. Addressing problems of Grassroots and Informal
sector
Engaging young students to solve/improve community
challenges including agriculture for helping the mass

B. Shankar Rao , Sandeep
Hegde, Tonse Supreet , Canara
Engineering College, Mangalore,
Karnataka designed a machine to
reduces the cost of de husking
by reducing need for skilled
laborers and also reduces
damage caused to the areca nuts
in traditional huskers .

The problem was posed by All
India
Arecanut
Growers
Association via Techpedia and a
dozen students and faculties
closely worked to develop the
solution.
Project is done under the guidance of
Mr. Ananth Pai of Mechanical
Engineering Department. Product Cost
-18,287/-
3. How to solve these problems through student
innovations?
The answer lies in creating a network that
harnesses creative & collaborative student
potential
Creating knowledge network involving students,
faculties, mentors, industries, policymakers,
national ecosystems etc.
Networking
Needs
Networking
minds
Networking
Hopes
Networking institutions
Minds-hopes-needs and institutions are being integrated laterally
at Techpedia.in at Sristi for harnessing youth potential of the country
for generating more social value.
3. To harness collaborative potential of students
Challenge young students for developing multiple heuristics
“ Creating More from Less for Many : MLM “ could be
the theme while innovating
3.1 Harness collaborative potential of students
‘Industrial Shodyatras’, Students exploring the problems of
MSMEs under the Techpedia-GTU project
3.2 Harness collaborative potential of students
Students came up with innovative solutions to IDPs & UDPs
under the Techpedia-GTU project
Socially relevant Innovations are not only happening in Big labs but also
in small college labs. Youths leading a journey from Research to Revenue .
Creating national stages/Innovation exhibitions to let
the innovative techies interact with experts and
national policy makers
Dr R.A.Mashelkar , Former DG CSIR , Dr Sameer Brahamchari , DG CSIR
interacting with young innovators at IIM-A during Innovation Exhibition
organized by Techpedia at sristi.
GYTI Awards: Pooling
innovations for solving
social /grassroots/MSME
problems
To pose challenges to students to address unsolved problems of our society.
Gandhiji had announced an award of 7700 pounds, ( approx Rs one lac ) to
redesign charkha-spinning wheel. Today the value of this prize will be more
than Rs10 crores. Industry association, government and others can offer
attractive prizes for solving those problems which have remained unsolved so
long.
(14 teams of Technology Students from whole India were awarded in 2012 by
Dr R.A.Mashelkar , Chairman, NIF at IIM-Ahmedabad organized by Techpedia
in the following Award Categories)
1.
MLM ( More from less from Many ) award
2.
Sristi socially relevant technological innovation award
3.
Strategic innovation and /or technological-edge award
3.2 Harness collaborative potential of students
Creating real-time online National Mentoring Network
(NMN) to link expert mentors across the nation to tech
innovators in need of mentorship
Techpedia is pooling experts from industries, academia, public system, policy
makers and connecting them virtually to the 2 million techies who are
studying across all states to improve their innovations . Every year these 2
million techies putting together 2 crore human months while doing their final
year projects/innovations. ( 10 months each) and Techpedia is trying to
harness these huge amount of human months collectively and solve the
persistent challenges of country.
Century old
challenges of
informal
sectors/MSMEs
2 million
technology
students per
year
National
mentoring
Network
IPR/Opensource
3.3 Harness collaborative potential of students
Kho-kho (relay) model of innovation
Innovation of Black Box for car
at Polytechnic latur, India
Semi-finished task shared in
open public domain for lateral
learning via Techpedia
Innovation task restarted by
new student at new place from
the left benchmark at Nagpur
GYTI Award winning Innovations for Mass
Shanu Sharma , student of IIT kanpur
designed Vardan, a frugal wheel chair which
is affordable by common man and which can
climb stairs without any external support.
Techpedia warded her during Gandhian
Young technological Innovation award 2012
at IIM-Ahmedabad.
GE awarded her recently during GE India
Innovation Award .
Techpedia envisages 2 million young
techies every year can cater the need
of needy people in India and develop
frugal solutions.
Techpedia is sourcing frugal ideas from
students across the nation, providing an
ecosystem to add value and helping in taking
these innovations till needy users.
Connecting Innovations laterally and vertically
Innovation at Pune
Innovation at VV Nagar, Gujarat, value added
Harish Umashankar Tiwari ,Prof. Dr. G.V. Parishwad developed at Pune developed
mechanism to run AC in vehicle using exhaust heat in the engine and associated
process. It can tackle the challenge of fuel required for A.C. which is 1/10th of total
fuel to run the engine. Further via knowledge network of Techpedia similar
innovation is being value added at V.V.Nagar , Gujarat by another set of techies to
take it further for developing more greener solution.
Harnessing collaborative potential of students across
disciplines and colleges to solve persistent problems
of our country in formal and informal sector
Techpedia involving various students
and faculties from multi disciplinary
sectors and space across the nation
and streamlining their efforts in
solving the challenges of both informal
sector and MSMEs.
Ex- in a energy segment challenge
faced by almost all SMEs- team of
students were pooled from VNIT,
Nagpur, SVNIT Surat, IIIT-Allahabad,
LDCE Ahmedabad and virtually linked
together to put together their
complementary skills and solve the
common challenges of SMEs who in
general can not afford their own R&D.
Techpedia engaging techies in solving community challenges
of small and cottage industries across various SME clusters
Classifying tiles in different grades of ceramic
tiles and creating a proper market is a common
challenge faced by small scale units in ceramic
industry clusters of Morbi, Gujarat as found by
techies during their Industrial Shodh Yatra done by
Techpedia and Gujarat Technical University.
Ankit Hareshbhai Lakhani ,Pratik Ladani,
Narendra Goria, Ashish Kalaria at GEC, Rajkot
collaboratively made efforts for cracking this
challenge using embedded system to classify tiles
in different grades using digital image processing as
a part of their innovative project.
Prof Bikhlani, HOD, ECE at GEC, Rajkot and local
industry persons at Morbi ceramic units made early
stage implementation of such low cost technology
to help the smaller Units and improve their
productivity.
Possible collaboration of techpedia.in with
Chinese students and University ecosystems: 1
• Developing a web portal www.techpedia.cn or
similar platform with help of www.techpedia.in and
put together the research work done in terms of
graduate/post graduate/PhD projects in curriculum
together in open source format so that technology,
management and other universities and industries ,
informal sectors across the world can know and
leverage the innovations of young students and their
professors for solving real life issues.
Possible collaboration of techpedia.in with
Chinese students and University ecosystems:2
• Creating an online web based mentoring network
at www.techpedia.cn and bringing volunteers,
professors , industry persons, research scholars
together for mentoring innovations, challenges and
grassroots innovations .
• Connecting mentors from universities and industry
networks of universities outside china for
developing multiple heuristics for innovations.
Possible collaboration of techpedia .in with
Chinese students and University ecosystems : 3
• Creating an
innovation ecosystem involving
students, professors, industry persons, industry
clusters, grassroots innovators
and scouting
challenges faced by these grassroots innovators and
small and medium industries and linking them to
university students for making efforts to solve them.
Posting these scouted challenges and grassroots
innovations on web at www.techpedia.cn so that
every student and professor
• Value addition of existing innovations of grassroots
innovators and small industry sector via students
and professors via this proposed ecosystem.
Possible collaboration of techpedia.in with
Chinese students and University ecosystems : 4
• Documenting challenges from small and medium
industries,
innovator’s
challenges
in
www.techpedia.cn via learning walks/Shodh Yatra
and sharing with other Chinese university students
and professors along with other nations.
• Creating an online collaborative platform via
www.techpedia.cn link students, mentors and users
and innovators across the globe for creating better
innovations for a better world.
Possible collaboration of techpedia.in with
Chinese students and University ecosystems : 5
• University to start posing innovation challenges
based on scouted innovations and user’s need and
arrange competitions/awards for all students inside
and across universities for proposing best solutions
for these challenges.
• Arranging city level/ province level/ university level
innovation based events, competitions and
supporting selected innovations in prototype making,
design/fabricating / patenting and helping students
in starting own ventures based on these innovations.
Possible collaboration of techpedia.in with
Chinese students and University ecosystems : 6
• Declaring joint innovation challenge competitions
/awards involving Chinese and Indian Universities
and connect challenges and mentors from both
India and China for value addition and development
of innovations based on formal and informal sector
needs.
• Appreciating such winners/ solutions in stages like
iccig and university based innovation contests. This
will inspire students, faculties , mentors and
innovators to come together virtually and design
inclusive solutions for India, china and whole world.
Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta
www.techpedia.in
hiranmay@techpedia.in
+91-9909959336
Thank You
Xie Xie