Cochin Shipyard, IIMK sign agreement to boost startups in maritime sector

The Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) and the Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode (IIMK) have signed an agreement to boost startups in the maritime sector.

The CSL and IIMK's business incubator Laboratory for Innovation Venturing and Entrepreneurship (LIVE) plan to augment initiatives to develop an ecosystem for supporting the startups in maritime sector from the technical, regulatory, financial, and marketing points of view by bringing the stakeholders together.

The agreement in this regard was signed on Friday between Executive Director of IIMK LIVE, Prof. Rajesh Upadhyayula, and General Manager (C-SAS) of CSL, Deepu Surendran, in presence of IIMK Director, Prof. Debashis Chatterjee and Chairman and Managing Director of CSL, Madhu S Nair.

CSL said that under this initiative, startups can get up to Rs 50 lakh as seed grants, Rs 1 crore as prototyping grants and equity funding for startups at the scale up stage.

"IIMK LIVE will act as an implementation partner of this initiative and will provide incubation, mentorship, training to startups selected under this program," a release issued by the CSL said.

Speaking on the occasion, Chatterjee said this collaboration will be an ideal platform for young and talented entrepreneurs to develop products and services in the marine space with financial support, mentoring and backing provided jointly by IIMK LIVE and CSL.

"Our Innovation centre LIVE has been at the helm of transitions for many successful early-stage startups and we foresee a renewed thrust on 'innovation' in the maritime sector with this game-changing collaboration," Chatterjee said.

Nair said that CSL was hopeful that this initiative will catalyse the growth of marine startups, which will augur well for the country.

"As an initial step, CSL has already declared a corpus of Rs 50 crore. We are also happy to have IIMK as our partner in this endeavour," Nair said.

Startups selected under the scheme would have to be committed to working on innovation, improvement of products, processes or services, and present a scalable business model with a high potential of employment generation and wealth creation.

The amount disbursed under this scheme to startups can be used to meet its operational expenditure and capital expenditure which include working capital, purchase of fixed assets and other expenses.