The Indian Navy and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Nagpur with an aim to equip Navy personnel with latest management technologies, inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore opportunities to train, up-skill and re-skill Armed Forces Personnel, Indian Navy personnel in particular.
The collaboration will focus on training naval personnel on emerging areas of Business Management, Financial Management, Block Chain, Project Management, Strategic Management, Digital Marketing, Supply chain, Logistic management and research.
Speaking on the occasion Director of IIM Nagpur Dr. Bhimaraya Ambanna Metri said,”IlM Nagpur will jointly collaborate with the Indian Navy to design a bouquet of on-campus/ off-campus program / workshop in areas of mutual interest involving the faculty and participants of full-time IIM program and Research Scholars to find innovative solutions to assist Indian Navy in realizing its dream of being Self Reliant.”
Notably, the joint collaborative effort will facilitate career enhancement and progression of serving personnel and up-skill retiring officers to meet industry requirements. As a part of the association, a Naval Headquarters team will shortly visit llM Nagpur to custom design executive education programs to meet specific requirements of the Navy.
Further, the MoU will also facilitate reciprocal visits by Indian Navy and IIM Nagpur personnel to respective organizations.
“Indian Navy and Armed Forces are looking forward to seeing the end results that the Joint Collaborative efforts will bring out in the near future and vistas of opportunities that this MoU will open for Armed Forces personnel in general and Indian Navy personnel in particular,” Chief of Personnel Indian Navy Vice Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi said on the occasion.
He further added that with conclusion of this MoU, the personnel of the Indian Navy will maintain their connection with the zenith end of Academia to keep the Indian Navy well aware of the latest happenings in the civil world.
To increase interaction with the industry, the Naval Technology Acceleration Council (NTAC) – the apex body of the Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organization (NIIO) has partnered for an online monthly session with the Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM).
Notably, Deep tech startups are also being recognized as ‘innovation Industry Partners’ and are provided handholding to better understand naval requirements. Further to engage young minds in premier educational institutions, the ‘Indian Naval Students Technical Engagement Programme’ (IN STEP) has been providing a five-month online internship to work on naval problem statements.
An ‘open challenge’ under IN STEP was also announced during the NTAC meeting, which was undertaken in partnership with SIDM and BharatShakti.in. An MoU was signed between the three organizations to this effect.
The Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organization (NIIO) aims at placing dedicated structures for the end-users to interact with academia and industry towards fostering innovation and indigenization for self-reliance in defence.
NIIO is a three-tiered organization that includes the Naval Technology Acceleration Council (N-TAC) to bring together the twin aspects of innovation and indigenization. A working group under the N-TAC implements the projects. Further, a Technology Development Acceleration Cell (TDAC) has also been created for induction of emerging disruptive technology in an accelerated time frame.
To equip the Indian Navy with modern era technologies, a workshop on the contemporary topic ‘Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (Al)’ was organised by the Navy’s premier technical training institute INS Valsura from 19 to 21 January 2022.
The workshop witnessed the participation of renowned IT Companies like Google, IBM, Infosys and TCS who shared the industry perspective during the three-day event. Conducted under the aegis of Southern Naval Command, the mega event also included distinguished academicians from IIT Delhi, New York University, Amrita University and Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA- IICT), who deliberated about the usage of latest trends and applications of Artificial Intelligence.
The Indian Navy has been focusing on incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in critical mission areas. Aligned with a similar ethos, Jamnagar-based INS Valsura has already been designated as the Center of Excellence (CoE) in the field of Big Data and a state-of-art lab on AI and Big Data Analysis (BDA) was also set up in January 2020.
The creation of the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the field of AI at INS Valsura, will be instrumental in the progress of pilot projects related to the adoption of AI and Big Data Analytics (BDA) in the domain of maintenance, HR and perception assessment. Likewise, the Indian Navy is also unifying and reorganizing its enterprise data, as data is the fuel for all AI engines.
By understanding the strategic importance of these niche technologies, the Indian Navy has also created an ‘AI Core Group’, which meets twice a year for assessing all AI/ ML initiatives.
