Industry-Academia-Government Collaboration is the Need of the Hour: Experts at PanIIT India Event
Ease of investment regulations and enhanced industry funding for research are the top priorities Tamil Nadu CM, M.K. Stalin and J&K LG, Manoj Sinha graced the event as Guests of Honour
New Delhi: PanIIT India, an umbrella body representing the alumni of IITs, organized its flagship event – PI-WOT 2021 – Global Virtual Technology Summit on September 17th – 18th. The 36 hours long mega event with more than 100 eminent speakers, 15000 delegates and 10+ knowledge sessions witnessed compelling discussions on transformative technology and its adoption to generate empowering solutions for the world. The dialogues were facilitated through engaging verticals of seminars, hackathon competition and a startup showcase.
Shri M.K. Stalin, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Government of Tami Nadu, the Guest of Honour, addressed the event by saying, “IIT has made proud contributions in Tamil Nadu’s growth and stood firmly in finding pioneering solutions. The state has a favorable ecosystem with highly skilled youth, surplus solar power and most number of SEZs making it an ideal place for innovative enterprises. We would want PanIIT to continue to collaborate with us in becoming a technical hub for emerging technology.”
Guest of Honour, Shri Manoj Sinha, Hon’ble Lieutenant Governor, Jammu & Kashmir and an IIT BHU alumnus highlighted the rapid transformation triggered by technology and stressed upon the need for businesses and industries to adapt and keep pace with technological changes. Speaking on the reconstructive power of technology he added, “The days are not far when there won’t be any electricity, electric cables or solar panels, as our windows, glass panels and roofs itself will generate electricity. Or the new education apps and modules with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, will make the teachers obsolete wherever possible.”
Delivering the grand keynote, Asha Jadeja Motwani, Founder, Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation, shared her thoughts on the reforms required to cultivate the business environment in India. “As an emerging global power, India must accept global corporate norms in the country and partner with global powers like United States or Israel on military front and this is something that the IIT alumni and startups should keep on their radar.” Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, brought a policy perspective and said, “We need right kind of policies for Science, Technology, and Innovation and we can see that there are encouraging developments taking place at this front.”
After the completion of inauguration ceremony and keynote addresses, the Summit moved on to have dialogues on the key themes of technology – AI, Automation, IoT, Cloud, Virtual Reality, and Digitization via multiple seminars and the involvement of 100+ distinguished experts. In subsequent sessions, experts across sectors deliberated upon the current industry scenario, emerging trends, challenges, and recommendations to foster an enabling environment for deep science and deep tech to solve some of the most critical world issues.
Industry veterans, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman Axilor Ventures, Co-founder Infosys; Desh Deshpande, Life Member, MIT Corporation and K Ananth Krishnan, CTO, TCS stressed upon the need for a deeper collaboration between the industry, academia, and government. Experts also felt that the government must ease out rules for global capital to come to India and highlighted that industry funding for research should increase in future for greater success.
Some of the prominent names from the industry, Dr. Aloknath De, CTO, Samsung R&D India; Irina Ghose, ED, Cloud Solutions, Microsoft, India; Sanjay Kaul, President, APAC & Japan, Service Provider Business, CISCO; Jeyandran Venugopal, CTO, Flipkart; Smita Ojha, Engineering Director, Google Workspace; Abhinav Sinha, Global COO & Chief Product Officer, OYO; Arun Chandavarkar, MD, Biocon Biologics Ltd.; Sumit Gupta, Co-founder and CEO, CoinDCX, were part of the discussions that took place in the two-day virtual affair.
Mr. Krishen K. Dhar, Chairman, PanIIT Alumni India in his address said, “First, I would like to congratulate the winners of Hackathon and Startup Showcase. We hope the winners can bring about empowering change through their innovations. Second, the aim of this summit was to establish dialogues on new & latest technologies and to bring different stakeholders under one roof and encourage collaborations. Through PIWOT 2021, we have been able to advance these objectives and would continue to do so in future as well.”