SRINAGAR: Two prototypes developed by local innovators including Saffron Processing Machine and Seed Sowing Machine were formally displayed at the National Institution of Technology (NIT) to an eminent audience invited for the occasion.
The innovators, Tariq Ahmad and Naik Qayoom were felicitated by the Director NIT Srinagar, Prof Sehgal, Ms Saloni Rai, Director Industries Kashmir, and Head IIDC Dr Saad Parvez. NIT Srinagar is the host institute (HI) and an implementing agency (IA) for Incubation and Design schemes of MoMSME, where the process of creating value for ideas through incubation and design intervention for MSMEs takes place.
Dr Saad Parvez, Head Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IIEDC) talked about the growing start-up culture in Kashmir and how IIEDC is playing its role in helping to grow that culture in NIT Srinagar.
Tariq, a PhD student at NIT, created a state-of-the-art machine that processes 500-gram to 1000-gram Saffron flowers and, using different inbuilt capacities, manages to comb, cut, and separate the medicinal and medical parts of the flower.
Naik Qayoom is an engineer from a Delhi college, who has been into innovation for almost a decade. “His machines is also impressive,” Saad said. “He has been running an innovation club for a long time.”
“This event was the culmination of the first phase of incubation in which two ideas of local innovators have been developed,” Saad said while offering an outline of the two machines. “The working prototypes include Saffron Processing Machine and Seed sowing machine) which have been successfully developed at NIT Srinagar, with the support of branch MSME Development and facilitation office Srinagar.”
IIEDC, he said, is becoming a bridge between budding entrepreneurs and the government schemes that would help them in all possible ways. “Over the past several years, IIED Centre has been at the forefront in terms of innovations. From small ideas to making innovative products such as ventilators, during Covid19, walnut DeHulling machines etc there is no end to innovations,” he added.
