TCS sets up open innovation platform to tackle local community challenges

PUNE: Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software services company, has set up an open innovation centre in Nashik to solve social problems in local communities.

The centre will seek to find ways to reduce the number of school dropouts, improve soil and water health, and ease parking woes in the city, among other initiatives. The challenges are open to students, early-stage startups and even individual entrepreneurs who can come up with innovative solutions, the company said.

The physical and online initiative Digital Impact Square (DIS), kicked off on March 1, has 40 innovators working on 11projects.

Hasit Kaji, head-special initiatives at TCS told ET that by June the number of innovators at the centre will go up to 100. "We have selected seven social themes based on interactions with local community and administration and crafted a set of challenges," he said.

The seven themes are health and hygiene, food and agriculture, citizen empowerment and transparency, transport and housing, education and skills, energy, water and environment, and financial and personal security. The Emerging Worlds Special Interest Group at MIT Media Lab is working with TCS to identify new research areas and mentoring innovators. The idea for the DIS sprang from the company's involvement in Kumbhathon, a project aimed at ensuring an incident-free Kumbh Mela in Nashik in August 2015.

"Most companies have innovation centres within the boundaries of the organisation or in partnership with academic institutes or other organisations but we wanted to create an open innovation platform, which is why we set up the DIS in the heart of Nashik," said Kaji.

The first cycle will run for six months, at the end of which teams are expected to have a basic prototype in place. The successful ones will then get another six months at the centre to mature their solution, and within a year the innovations will be deployed to the first set of users within the city. "This then becomes a beachhead for them to launch into a potential startup," said Kaji.

TCS's role will span from providing infrastructure and technology elements to bringing in mentors to guide the teams.In 18 months we'll have 300 innovators at the centre," said Kaji.

TATA Consultancy Services ( TCS )