Tamil Nadu: Madras Christian College to open innovation park

Madras Christian College, Tambaram, one of the most prestigious academic institutions of Tamil Nadu is venturing into a new area and is opening an innovation park in the campus.

The college is opening the innovation park as a step to induce students into the world of startups and to train them for starting such startups and to make them successful. Interestingly, this is the first of such an innovation park in an arts college that specialises to provide expertise to students for venturing into setting up their own enterprises in a challenging world.

The park is being constructed at the heart of the campus in an area of 70,000 square feet and will provide students of different streams to exchange ideas among them and to develop this idea into a new and innovative product.

The innovation centre which is being constructed in an environmentally friendly manner will have writers' cafe, entrepreneurs' cafe, open air theatre, design studio, data analytical lab, science lab, psychometric lab, media science lab and instrumentation lab.

The project which can be termed as one of the major milestones in the 183 old history of the highly reputed college, will have support from the industry and organisations like Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) have already extended intellectual support to the project which will change the lives of a large number of students.

Rajesh Jacob, a second year student of Economics at MCC while speaking to IANS said, "This is an interesting project and I think that by speaking with other like minded students for opening a new venture, the proposed innovation centre can provide ample of support to the students."

The Madras Rubber Factory (MRF) has already promised a financial support of Rs 26.9 crore for the project and the Director of MRF, K.M. Mammen, who is also one of the directors of Madras Christian College(MCC) said, "We are happy in supporting an initiative of the Madras Christian College for an innovation park which will be a gateway for the students to enter the world of entrepreneurship."