State to position itself as the global destination for space tech with India’s first official event hosted on Metaverse

HYDERABAD: The Telangana government will be launching a State-specific space tech framework on Monday, with the aim of establishing the State as a globally recognised one-stop destination for space technology. The event would be India’s first-ever official event hosted on Metaverse.

Giving company to IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao at the event would be NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, ISRO chairman Somanath S and IN-SPACe chairman Pawan Goenka. The aim of the State government is to leverage the State’s innovation ecosystem to provide holistic support to the industry and be key to the national growth of the sector.

Telangana is already a leader in space tech with the presence of global companies, both mid-sized and start-ups, in the sector. This is evident from the fact that the State produced 30 per cent of parts used in the Mars Orbiter mission. Telangana also leads with the many MSME units of defence and has been a base for several defence institutes.

Space tech in particular has seen countries racing to establish their superiority. In this regard, the State government will initiate a space tech research program in partnership with the industry, academia, and other government agencies to catalyse the innovation. This framework aims to encourage private partnerships in the space industry.

The government will also facilitate grants, suitable incentives and infrastructure support to promote research and development to boost space tech innovation. The downstream space tech applications have the potential to directly impact citizens’ life and so the government would support pilots and proof-of-concept with the various government departments.

The departments shall assist with on-ground implementation, provide mentorship, closely monitor the deployment to leverage the developed solution across the state and across these projects, and will leverage the application at the State level.

According to the draft policy, the state will offer space-tech fellowships to students from India and abroad, to work on high-end use cases in partnership with government departments, and national and international research academic institutions. The fellowships shall focus on both the technical as well as business aspects in order to ignite the spirit of entrepreneurship.

The state would set up space tech innovation cohorts in partnership with industry and in-focus areas of the state viz. agriculture and insurance, urban planning and flood modelling, disaster management, forestry and environment, and internet and communication.

These cohorts will be carefully mentored by both the space tech and target domain experts across industry, academia and government agencies. The state will forge partnerships with prominent academic and research institutions globally to collaborate with Telangana based universities and work towards applied space tech research and innovation.

The government will facilitate joint projects between researchers with both virtual collaborations and active exchange programs. With a focus to deliver socioeconomic impact that may arise from the use of space tech, the State will also identify high impact use-cases and shall conduct grand challenges for the same.

This initiative will allow innovators to work towards building applications that can alleviate various problems for the citizens. The best solutions shall be on-boarded on the proposed space tech accelerator to build a comprehensive business model, quickly go to market and deploy the solutions at scale.

Taking Everyone Along For A Space Journey

The Telangana government will initiate a space tech research program in partnership with the industry, academia, and other government agencies to catalyse innovation