India To Set Up Graphene Engineering And Innovation Centre To Empower Emerging Tech Startups

India will soon set up a graphene engineering and innovation centre in Kerala to drive commercialisation of the advanced material and to empower emerging tech startups.

Launching the ‘Graphene-Aurora programme’ at an event in Maker Village Kochi, Kerala on Monday (14 August), electronics and IT secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma announced that a section 8 company (not for profit) called ‘India Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre (I-GEIC)’ will be set up and the initial operations will start from the recently opened facility of Government of Kerala at Digital Science Park in Trivandrum.

Sharma added that it will nurture the deep/emerging graphene technology and innovation ecosystem that can guide, develop, implement, and support SMEs and startups to commercialise developed graphene technologies for scale adoption, according to a statement from the Ministry of Electronics and IT.

He also mentioned that creation of a commercialisation eco-system for graphene as an emerging technology would help India take a pole position in the world’s new material market.