VIJAYAWADA: Only one out of every 1,000 engineering graduates passing out of different colleges every year was found to be employable by the industry, and this was happening because of “lack of innovation” in colleges and the huge gap between the needs of the industry and the skills being imparted to the students, said representatives of the industry and academia here on Saturday.

They pointed out that it was to fill this gap and create a “win-win” situation for the industry and educational institutions that the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), an autonomous body under the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, had been encouraging opening of Centres of Relevance and Excellence (CORE) in select institutions of science and technology across the country.

One such centre is being set up at the V.R. Siddhartha Engineering College (VRSEC) here, for which a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the college principal K. Mohan Rao and Efftronics managing director D. Rama Krishna on Saturday.

The centre would work mainly in the area of telematics, an emerging inter-disciplinary field of computers, electronics and IT that has high relevance for automobile sector.

Mr. Rama Krishna said that the Efftronics would contribute Rs.25 lakh a year for a period of three years to the TIFAC-CORE, and “deeply involve” itself in encouraging the students to work for “innovation” and create “value to customers”.

TIFAC-CORE Research Monitoring Committee Chairman S. Rajagopalan said that the VRSEC was likely to offer M.Tech in Telematics in a couple of years, as it was a field that had so much potential in the country.

He felt that Vijayawada was the right place to emerge in this field because of its equidistance from cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.