70 mini fablabs are set to be built in the next 9 months by the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), a technology business incubator launched in 2006 in the state of Kerala, South India.
20 mini fablabs should be set up by the end of March in engineering colleges, followed by 50 others in the next 6 months. “Besides engineering colleges, they will be allocated to polytechnics, arts and science colleges,” told Jayasankar Prasad, CEO of KSUM, to The Hindu at the third edition of the two-day Fab Asia Network, held in Kochi and Mumbai last January.
In government colleges, the building costs of the new fablabs will be entirely funded by the Indian government, adds The Hindu. For aided and private college, the government will provide respectively 50% and 25% of the funding. KSUM is also planning to run new courses in digital fabrication in association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Fab Academy.
KSUM and its entity named Fablab Kerala have already build twin fablabs, one in Thiruvananthapuram, capital of the state of Kerala, the other in Kochi, in association with MIT and with the support of the Kerala government. An initiative that illustrates quite well the dynamism of the Indian maker movement.
KSUM and Fablab Kerala websites