Confederation of Indian Industry to extend support to entrepreneurial students

Amaravati: The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) would work as a catalyst to promote entrepreneurial talent pool emerging from the universities, Vijay Naidu Galla, chairman of CII-Andhra Pradesh, said while addressing the first Industry Academia Summit at the SRM University here on Thursday.

Vijay Naidu, who is also the vice-president of Amar Raja Batteries, while discussing the gap between knowledge creation and utilisation, offered solutions to bridge the gap.

"Post-liberalisation, private universities have emerged as important players in education and significant women students are excelling at academics. The industries should incur expenditure on supporting academic institutes that are into research work," the industrialist stressed.

Nagari MLA R. K. Roja, who is also the chairperson of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, shared the initiatives taken by the state government to inspire the youth to indulge in research. She appreciated SRM-AP's infrastructure and research initiatives.

Vijay Anand, CEO of Amar Raja Batteries, stressed on harnessing the potential of imaginative students. He said that infrastructure is not a bottleneck since it is churning out half a million tech graduates a year. He spoke of emerging trends in the technological sphere such as AI, ML, Bioelectronics, and genome research.

Earlier, Dr. Narayana Rao pro vice-chancellor of the varsity introduced varsity as a multidisciplinary research intensive institute. He said that the university worked on projects such as hardening of gold alloy and 3D printing on gold jewellery in association with Tanishq.

Also, SRM Amara Raja Centre of Excellence will be established here for developing energy storage devices. It is also working on developing hydrogen infused railway engines with Indian Railways. Dr. D Gunasekaran, Registrar, Dr. GS Vinod Kumar, Convener of the conference were also present.