Startup Technology Parks of India To Develop 12 Centres of Excellence

The Startup Technology Parks of India (STPI) is set to develop 12 Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in the country.

 Dr Omakr Rai, DG, STPI, at the 30th Foundation Day celebrated on June 5 announced the decision and said that it aims to make India a product nation in times to come.

These CoEs is expected to play a pivotal role in revving up R&D, innovation, intellectual property creation, and product development.

Since its inception in 1991, Software Technology parks of India under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, has been working towards equitable and inclusive IT-led growth pan-India which in turn has helped promoting Software exports, Science, Technology & Innovation (STI) and Software product development.

The CoE are to be developed in the areas of emerging technology areas such as AI & Computer Vision, IoT, Fintech, Block chain, Augmented & Virtual Reality, Gaming & Animation etc through collaborative model. 

Started with 3 centres, STPI currently has 60 centres pan India with 52 centres in Tier II and Tier III citie. It will launch five centre of excellence in all Northeast capital cities like Gangtok, Itanagar, Kohima, Aizawl and Agartala. An official release has said that seven CoEs will be operational in Akola, Gandhinagar, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Vizag and two in Bangalore. These CoEs will cater to the domains like Heathcare, IT, AI, Agriculture, Data Analytics, IoT etc. 

STPI has already established 13 CoEs at Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Mohali, Bengaluru, Pune, New Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal and Lucknow.

STPI contributes to 8% of GDP through export of IT/ITES -Under the Bpo promotion scheme, STPI is helping Bpo across smaller towns. Currently, 247 BPO/ITES units are operational in 102 cities, directly employing 41,628 people.