SOA’S EDGE IN PLACEMENTS AND STARTUP INCUBATION SOA’S EDGE IN PLACEMENTS AND STARTUP INCUBATION

THE ODISHA BASED SOA DEEMED-TO-BE-UNIVERSITY HAS BEEN EXCELLING IN PLACEMENTS YEAR AFTER YEAR, MOVING UP THE RUNGS BY WAY OF BOTH QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF JOB OFFERS FROM LEADING CORPORATES, AS WELL AS ACHIEVING BIG IN INCUBATING ADMIRABLE STUDENT STARTUPS.

magine students impressing dignitaries like Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s Minister for Education, Subhas Sarkar, Minister of State for Education, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, with their startup projects. That is what four student groups of Odisha’s Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) deemed-to-be university achieved recently. These teams belonging to SOA’s faculty of engineering, the Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), had created four startups - Wedmist Technology, Twinverse Technology, Let’s Drive & Extrava Study Tours - that won the appreciation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The event was an elite one, the recent sixday Future of Work Exhibition held on the sidelines of the G20 Education Working Group meeting which was held at the CSIR Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology in Bhubaneswar. The first startup Wedmist Technology’s flagship product serves hyper-local service providers through Artificial Intelligence

(AI) while Twinverse Technology focuses on diverse areas including archaeology, tourism etc that are among Odisha’s strengths as well as in novel product designing. The third startup Let’s Drive is working on creating unique employment opportunities in the use of electric vehicles, while the fourth one Extrava Study Tours focuses on enhancing the workplace skills of people seeking employment using innovative means. Apart from the Union Ministers, other top dignitaries who visited the SOA startups stall included Prof TG Sitharam, Chairman of AICTE, K Sanjaya Murthy, Secretary, Higher Education in the Ministry of Education, Prof Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, EC, NAAC and Dr Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi, Chairman, National Council for Vocational Education and Training. While student startups are inspiring for all, they directly empower and enable only a fewer number of students, and SOA has bigger initiatives that enable almost all of its 15,000 strong student community. One such recent event was an industrial interactive workshop conducted by SOA in Bhubaneswar on the topic ‘Recent Developments and Challenges in Core Industries’. The workshop focused on subjects like emerging areas of renewable energy, future challenges of work, workforce and workplace in manufacturing industries, challenges which obstruct the improvement of core industries, and opportunities for smart manufacturing and application of data science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Industries. The workshop was organised by the Department of

Mechanical Engineering of the SOA’s Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), and featured industry experts from Brahmani River Pellets Ltd, CTTC, Sunstone Solar Solutions, Sree Metaliks, and GMR Power Plant as the resource persons who discussed the dynamically changing career prospects of engineering students. The experts detailed the need for preparing graduates in the field of science and technology by inculcating various emerging skill sets required by the industry. With such empowering programs it is no wonder really that SOA has not only ended the need for Odisha based students to go outside the state for higher education, but is also attracting students from all over India and some pockets of the world. This deemed university has been excelling in placements year after year, moving up the rungs by way of both quantity and quality of job offers from leading corporates. SOA is accredited by NAAC with ‘A++’ grade and is in its 3rd cycle, and is ranked Internationally by QS and THE World University Rankings. In MHRD’s NIRF India Rankings 2022, it is 16th in the University Category, 27th in the

Engineering Category, 18th in the Medical Category, 10th in the Dental Category, 9th in the Law Category and 45th in the Research Category. SOA has also been granted the Category-I Graded Autonomy Status by UGC, Government of India. The sprawling SOA campus in the capital city of Odisha is ranked 3rd nationally for being most clean under the Government’s Swachh Campus initiative. The brainchild of Prof. (Dr.) Manojranjan Nayak, who serves as the President of SOA, this deemed university follows national and international standards in pedagogy and the quality of its teaching learning systems and processes. For instance, SOA follows the Outcome Based Education (OBE) framework and has several NBA and ICAR accredited programs. SOA is also home to the NABH accredited SUM Hospital and an NABL accredited Diagnostics Laboratory. SOA is professionally led by a team of academicians led by Prof. (Dr) Amit Banerjee as Pro Chancellor; Prof. (Dr.) Pradipta Kumar Nanda as Vice Chancellor; Prof. (Dr.) Bibhuti Bhusan Pradhan as Pro ViceChancellor; and Prof. (Dr.) Sitikantha Mishra also as Pro Vice-Chancellor.