The Maker Village CEO described the iDEX selection as a milestone for the pioneering startup initiative founded in February 2015 under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, with Indian Institute of Information Technology as the host institute. Already, close to 10 startups at Maker Village are working with the defence establishment

KOCHI: The union government has selected Maker Village Kochi as a partner for its iDEX programme that pursues an innovative defence ecosystem, thus facilitating the country’s largest hardware deep-tech incubator to create solutions for the armed services.

iDEX, or innovations for defence excellence, gives innovators the strength to serve India’s defence needs by funding and hand-holding them. The defence innovation organisation (DIO) under the Ministry of Defence chose Maker Village as a partner of the program that also facilitates customer engagement.

iDEX, launched in April last year, primarily strives for an ecosystem fostering innovation and technology in the areas of defence and aerospace. Startups are among the enterprises made eligible under the programme that gives grant and other support for R&D solutions of potential adoption.

The Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair described the iDEX selection as a milestone for the pioneering startup initiative founded in February 2015 under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, with Indian Institute of Information Technology as the host institute.

iDEX provides the selected startups access to the defence markets besides grants of upto Rs 1.5 crore. “It will encourage young entrepreneurs from our ecosystem to propose new ideas and platforms that benefit the armed services,” Nair said. This also creates opportunities for the iDEX winners from across the country to come and do their product development at Maker Village, he added.

Already, close to 10 startups at Maker Village are working with the defence establishment. Three of them had won the earlier edition of iDEX challenge and are developing their products, while an equal number of startups have supplied products to DRDO labs. Two others are working with innovations related to national security.

Around 75 startups with cutting-edge technologies have been incubated at Maker Village, which functions at the integrated startup complex in Kalamassery near Kochi.