The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Department on Tuesday asked eight technological universities and institutes to form MSME-Academia fusions in colleges under them soon.
The department sent a letter in this regard to Vice Chancellors of the BPUT, OUAT, SOA and Centurion Universities and Directors of the IIT and IIIT of Bhubaneswar and NIT, Rourkela.
It informed that a meeting held under chairmanship of the Chief Secretary on July 15 has issued a direction in this regard. The universities have asked to take immediate steps to ensure that each college under them would have a group of students under a faculty to interact and identify the problems of MSMEs. Besides, every college should have an Entrepreneurship Development Cell.
The department also asked the varsities and premier institutions to create funds by pooling the CSR funds of the corporate to support the students at various stages of innovations and filing of patent applications.