CIE@IIIT-HYDERABAD HOSTS WORKSHOP FOR IOCL LEADERSHIP

Hyderabad: Over 30 top brass officials from Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL)’s Corporate Innovation Council attended a workshop at CIE@IIITH that explored various topics related to the startup ecosystem.

The full council led by Dr. S. S. V. Ramakumar (board member of IOCL, Director R&D) was guided through the process of startup seeding, mentoring, acceleration and funding. This was to help their leadership understand how corporate innovation programs can be run, and how startups can be accelerated. Specifically from corporate innovation initiatives that come with well defined market problems and assured pilots in IOCL.

Among other things, the workshop also discussed how deeply technology and research- based startups can be seeded through co-innovation and open innovation models bringing corporate, research institute and startups together.

Speaking on the workshop, Dr. S. S. V. Ramakumar, Director of R&D at IOCL said, “Given CIE@IIITH’s knowledge and experience in this domain, the workshop was highly informative. We hope to be able to translate some of these learnings into our startup initiative.”

Earlier this year, IOCL launched IndS_UP, a start-up scheme with a revolving corpus fund of Rs. 30 crore to promote promising start-ups and nurture an eco-system conducive for innovations in the domestic hydrocarbons sector. The first cohort of 11 startups was shortlisted through a nationwide sourcing and selection process and CIE@IIITH had shared its best practices and experiences, which helped IOCL structure its program.

Prof P J Naryananan, Director, IIIT-Hyderabad said, “IIIT-Hyderabad has several initiatives underway to connect research with industry. We’re trying to help with innovation that solves industry specific problems.”