Department of Heavy Industry (DHI), Govt of India, has embarked on a mission to promote innovation, R&D and product development in India for various sectors. A step towards this mission is the creation of technology platform e-portals where such technology development, information exchange and innovation can be facilitated. There are five portals being developed for specific sectors by different organizations viz, BHEL for power sector equipment, HMT for machine tools, CMFTI for manufacturing technology, ICAT and ARAI for automotive sector.

The objective of these portals is to create an ecosystem which will bring solution seekers and problem solvers together. These include, industry, academia, research institutes, start-ups, professionals and experts. ICAT is developing technology platform for automotive industry called ASPIRE - Automotive Solutions Portal  for Industry, Research and Education.

The key objective of this portal is to facilitate the Indian Automotive Industry to become self reliant by assisting in innovation and adoption of global technological advancements by bringing together the stakeholders from various associated avenues. The activities would include Research and Development, Product Technology Development, Technological Innovations, Technical and Quality Problem Resolution for the industry, Manufacturing and Process Technology Development, hosting Challenges for Technology Development and also conducting Market Research and Technology Surveys for identifying the trends in the Indian auto industry.

The e-portal will act as a one stop solution providing a technology platform which will help to bring together the various stakeholders from the Indian auto industry, providing the necessary impetus for ushering the industry into future with combined efforts. This includes bringing together the automotive OEMs, Tier 1 Tier 2 & Tier 3 companies, R&D institutions and academia (colleges & universities) on matters involving technology advancements.

Apart from acting as a solution and resource platform, the portal will also host grand challenges in line with the need of the industry as will be identified from time to time, for development of key automotive technologies.

The ASPIRE portal has been prepared by ICAT and made live in its initial version on 15th July, 2020 as Phase-I. The portal can be accessed through https://aspire.icat.in. The first phase will include connecting the users and experts on the portal for functionality assessment. Phase II of the portal which is expected by August 15, 2020 will include the posting of domain specific challenges, team formation and finalizing the milestones for the execution of projects for the said challenges and industry problems. The portal is expected to be fully functional with hosting of the Grand challenges and providing an elaborate resource database and project monitoring and execution by 15thSeptember, 2020.

These measures are being developed to develop strong and self-reliant automotive industry in India which is in tune with the vision of Make in India and Atma-Nirbhar vision of Government of India.

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GK