Mission REACH

Today’s liberalized economic world order is witnessing a silent competition for sustenance and excellence in almost every sector of the economy. Focusing on such competition – both national and global levels, the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) of the Department of Science & Technology (DST) launched MISSION REACH in the year 2000 – a mission embedded in its Technology Vision 2020. TIFAC is addressing the vision through an objective driven approach by nurturing quality man power in the areas of high relevance to the Indian industry.

A concerted and unparalleled effort in the area of higher education, Mission REACH (Relevance & Excellence in ACHieving new heights in educational institutions) endeavors to put in place, a structured mechanism that can produce world class man power of direct relevance to Indian industries/ organizations who can take the challenges of fierce global competition.

Under the Mission, institutions are being targeted for creating Centers of Relevance & Excellence (COREs). These TIFAC-COREs are mandated for excelling in focused areas. Through these Centers, technology generation and skill up gradation of workface is to be done on a continuous basis.

Mission REACH is totally objective driven and relevance oriented, and therefore goes beyond the confines of conventional subjects and budgetary ceiling. The Mission is also aiming to be geographically spread out across the country thereby creating mini-power houses of knowledge and excellence in every corner of the country.

 Telematics

“Telematics” an integration of Telecommunications and Informatics, providing the technology foundation for rapid innovations in computer networking, wireless communications and voice, data, image and video communications, has numerous applications such as vehicle based electronics systems, vehicle tracking and positioning, automotive electronics, telemedicine, distance education, mobile telephony, online navigation and information services etc.,

The following graph represents an overview of the Telematics industry. The core technology providers in the middle and the partner layers around them are often the same which ever end application or services they produce.

Move your mouse over the graph to see the definition of each area

The field of Telematics has always been driven by advances in wireless communications, digital signal processing, mobile communications and networking. Therefore, at any given time, the applications impose several challenges on the design and implementation of Telematics systems.

Indian industries and organizations developing as well as using Telematics do have significant presents, nevertheless of full fledged centers of excellence in the core area of Telematics so far have not come up in any area of the country. This provides motivation for taking up the challenge.

The presence of automotive giants who exported a billion dollar worth last year from Indian industry with OEM, auto component facilities; and major companies from IT provide us a very well orchestrated echo-system.

IT industry globally is a trillion dollar industry of which we have 2% of the global market and Automotive industry is 3.5 trillion and “Telematics” constitute about 5 to 10%. The interesting fact is that 90% of the new services in telecom come from Telematics which clearly shows the growth is actually going to be in Telematics.

It is expected to create million plus jobs in IT industry, another million plus in IT enabled services and another million in Telematics over the next five years.

TIFAC-CORE & Telematics is a collaborative effort of TIFAC (representing government), VR Siddhartha Engineering College and industries in the domain of Telematics. The industry partners in this unique venture characterized by both public-private partnership and industry-academia interaction include

• Agilent Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore
• National Instruments Systems India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore
• Advanced Digital Microsystems, Mumbai
• Optima Technologies & Consultants, Hyderabad
• Efftronics Systems Pvt. Ltd., Vijayawada
• Linkwell Tele systems Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad
• FutureTech Instruments Pvt. Ltd , Secunderabad
• Opal-RT Technologies Inc, Bangalore
• Electronic Industries Association of AP
• Vi Micro Systems Pvt., Ltd, Chennai
• Falcon Electro Tech Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore
• Scientech Technologies Pvt.,Ltd, Indore
• E Tech Automation Pvt. Ltd, Guntur
• Texas Instruments (India) Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore

TIFAC-CORE would be open to industries in Telematics becoming partners as the project progresses.
The centre was launched on 1st February,2009.