EDITORIALLieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Saturday highlighted the potential of academic-driven startups to transform J&K’s economy by fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in educational institutions. In this regard he highlighted the UT administration’s key initiatives like J&K Start-up Policy and potential in Holistic Agriculture Development Program (HADP) to transform the start-ups and entrepreneurship ecosystem in the UT, especially in rural areas. He also remarked that there were immense possibilities for startups in tourism, health, logistics, handloom, handicraft, horticulture, agriculture and allied sectors. He made these remarks while addressing the national seminar on ‘Role of academic-driven Startups in developing economy of J&K UT (RASE 2024)’.
In today’s world academic-driven startups are a success story. There are many such success stories involving big names from Google to DeepMind Technologies, so on and so forth. These startups are businesses that emerge from or are closely linked to academic research and innovation. A business backed by knowledge and technology developed within universities or research institutions to create commercial products is undoubtedly a great concept. Such startups often involve transferring intellectual property (IP) or technology from academic institutions to the commercial sector. Once, as suggested by the LG, there is a partnership between startups and the academic institutions, such businesses would be having a solid foundation on groundbreaking research or innovations that have the potential to solve real-world problems or meet market demands.
As rightly remarked by the LG, such startups would be a powerful instrument to bridge the gap between universities and industries. The students set action-oriented goals to turn their entrepreneurial dreams into reality and contribute to the nation’s socio-economic transformation and economic growth. As suggested by him, there is a strong need to enhance collaboration between academia, industry and policy makers, besides need to provide high-quality technical and vocational education and training to future entrepreneurs.
On its part the UT administration should assist these startups to attract sufficient funding to transition from research prototypes to market-ready products besides developing a viable business model and navigating the complexities of bringing a new technology to market. Combination of those with research and academic expertise and those with business acumen is definitely going to change the economic scenario of the UT subject the administration is ready for handholding. The process of translating research advancements into practical applications that benefit society is going to contribute to the economic growth through innovation and entrepreneurship.
