JAMMU, FEBRUARY 14: IIM Jammu, IIT Delhi & Govt. Polytechnic, Vikram Chowk, organised an EV Start-up workshop, today. The event was attended by faculty and students from IIT Jammu & MIET. The event was organised by IIM Jammu, under the guidance of its director Prof. B. S. Sahay and supported by FITT, IIT Delhi under the aegis of the SONA COMSTAR grant challenge for Electric Vehicles. The event organization was supported by the Govt. Polytechnic, Vikram Chowk, Jammu, which nests the TATA-CIIIT CoE for vehicles. In his welcome note, Prof. Arun Bangotra (Principal) welcomed the participants of different institutions and lauded the initiative of IIM Jammu towards organising such a participatory event. He also invited the participants to make use of the facilities for joint research objectives. The main speaker on the occasion was Mr. Jawaad Khan of Bhaderwah, who is the owner of the start-up ‘Tadpole’. His company has received the order of retrofitting 50 gypsies of the Indian Army with EV motors. He shared his story of how a student of average academic scores and an economically weaker section from Bhaderwah, he self-learnt about electric vehicles and reached a stage where he is retrofitting EVs for Indian Army & HNIs besides assisting IIT Delhi & other IITs set up hi-tech EV research labs. Due to the sustainability overtones of his work, he has been invited as a speaker at the stakeholder conversation meet of the United Nations Environment Program. During the presentation and Q & A Session with the Chief Innovation Officer of IIM Jammu, Dr. Vivek Sharma, he discussed a lot of research areas where the academic community can undertake research and build start-ups. The program was curated by the business incubation centre of IIM Jammu viz. Foundation for Entrepreneurship Innovation & Skill Development to make the faculty and students of the region aware of the current challenge statement in the EV industry and invite them to form research groups to solve specific problems related to EVs. Mr. Anubhav Sen from FITT, IIT Delhi introduced the grant of Rs 80 lakhs inviting solutions in the domains of V2X Communication, Indigenous EV components, EV utilities, Recycling/upcycling of EV cells, Maintenance & Diagnostics, Thermal Management and EV cell Chemistry.
