Covid-19: IIT Kanpur, BDL Ink Pact To Make Affordable Ventilators

Source : Hindustan Times

To make affordable ventilators for Covid-19 treatment, Bharat Dynamics Ltd. (BDL), a defense public sector undertaking, has come forward for large scale manufacturing of the ventilators developed by Nocca Robotics, an incubated start-up of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-K) Kanpur.

A  MoU to this effect was signed recently between BDL, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kanpur’s incubator Foundation for Innovation and Research in Science and Technology (FIRST) and Nocca Robotics Private Limited (NRPL).

“Our project for developing an affordable ventilator has been strengthened with Bharat Dynamics Ltd supporting us. Now, we will be able to scale up the production and make this critical device widely available as a ‘Make in India’ product, said director, IIT Kanpur, Prof Abhay Karandikar.

He said, “I am very grateful to Commodore Siddharth Mishra, CMD, BDL for taking this initiative and I would like to invite more such enterprises to join hands with us in our aim to encourage indigenous design and development.”

“We are truly impressed by what the young engineers from IIT Kanpur have been able to achieve in such a short time and I hope that more such innovative solutions will come from Indian technopreneurs. I am happy that BDL has partnered with IIT Kanpur in manufacturing of these ventilators on a large scale. Together, we will give our best to serve the nation at this critical hour,” said Commodore Siddharth Mishra (retd), chairman and managing director of BDL..

Apart from providing support to the critical patient, the ventilator’s design also has unique features to safeguard the frontline healthcare workers from exposure to the virus. At the helm of this innovation are three young graduates of IIT Kanpur – Nikhil Kurele, Harshit Rathore and Tushar Agarwal.