Incubator To Dovetail 5G Technology, Industry 4.0

Maker Village, which registered great strides in deep tech incubation, is betting big on 5G technology, considered to be a true driver of industry 4.0.

With an eye on the future, they have drawn up plans to create a 5G district and an advanced manufacturing facility for industry 4.0, which can be dovetailed to the expertise of the hardware startups they incubate.

They recently submitted two proposals to Union minister of state for electronics & information technology Sanjay Dhotre, while he was on a visit to the facility.

“If you look at the profile of our startups, you can see that some of them are now recognized in the national level. This became possible because of a focused effort in the domain of hardware tech. To supplement this, we want advanced manufacturing that focuses on deep-tech areas,” said Maker Village CEO Prasad Balakrishnan Nair.

Idea is to tap the potential of 5G and build applications using the technology. “We are not going to build 5G technology products. We would be using 5G to develop the infrastructure to develop applications for sectors like drones and robotics, which are currently being developed in 3G,” said Nair. Industry 4.0, which allows seamless merging of physical and digital technologies, is expected to enable new operating models for smart factories which lessen operational cost needs for infrastructure and power.

“To leverage the power of 5G for emerging deep tech areas, we need to create infrastructure,” he said.

“With deep tech areas emerging as our core competency, we need specialized facilities for manufacturing in sectors like robotics and drones,” he said.

Nair feels that deep tech has the potential to propel Maker Village several orbits ahead. “That would be a point where even international startups can come here and set up base here. The Maker Village would become a hardware centre of excellence with international competency around which an industry ecosystem would be anchored,” he said.―Times of India