Qualcomm partners C-DOT to develop indigenous telecom tech

Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc.’s subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies, on Friday, announced a collaboration with the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), a publicly-funded research institution focused on telecom technology by the Government of India.

Through this collaboration, C-DOT and Qualcomm Technologies will jointly facilitate access for selected startups, OEMs, and academia to foundational technologies and domain experts, stimulating innovation and helping them scale up their R&D efforts, accelerate the pace of commercialisation, and business development of Indian startups engaged in building indigenous telecom solutions.

As part of the collaboration, Qualcomm will support C-DOT with expertise and best practices, state-of-the-art technology, intellectual property training, and tools to enable Indian developers, academia, and OEMs, fast-tracking the development and commercialisation of indigenous telecom solutions utilising Qualcomm wireless solutions and technologies.

Rajkumar Upadhyay, CEO of C-DOT, said, “Our collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies will help transition us to an era where innovation thrives, unlocking the vast potential of Indian R&D, accelerating the commercialisation of new products and use cases, and fostering a vibrant ecosystem of startups.”

“With access to Qualcomm technologies and a highly skilled local team, we will accelerate the local ecosystem to develop and commercialise 5G FWA and mmWave solutions and use cases, driving leading-edge Wi-Fi experiences ranging from 200Mbps to 10Gbps+ performance,” he added.

Savi Soin, SVP and President of Qualcomm India, said, “India has a thriving developer and startup ecosystem driven by enormous technology talent. The recent initiatives by the government have been key in making India a growth-conducive market for tech companies of various scales.

Soin said that the strategic collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies, DoT, and C-DOT to help accelerate India’s growth story in the years to come. The scale and capability of our India R&D centers across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, and Noida are ready to support the local ecosystem towards a vision of an Atmanirbhar Bharat.

Qualcomm Design in India Challenge is Qualcomm’s flagship incubation program for hardware startups with dedicated engineering personnel and a laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment and prototype platforms in Bengaluru to support the startups. In 2020, Qualcomm launched another startup initiative – Qualcomm Women Entrepreneur India Network, a mentorship program for women-founded startups. Recently, Qualcomm announced the expansion of its Chennai Design Centre in Tamil Nadu, which specialises in the development of wireless connectivity solutions, reinforcing Qualcomm’s commitment to staying at the forefront of the wireless communications industry.

In a related announcement, Qualcomm said it is also making strides in fundamental AI research by providing the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) with a grant of $186,000 toward developing Edge AI use cases and AI models on Qualcomm platforms, led by Professor Ramesh Loganathan from IIITH.

The development kit, called the Qualcomm Innovators Development Kit (QIDK), is designed to help developers shorten their path to productivity by providing a package of hardware, software, and customer support built on the latest premium Snapdragon system-on-chip (SoC), giving developers all the features, functions, and performance of Snapdragon in one place.

This is the latest among Qualcomm’s ongoing initiatives to strengthen the R&D ecosystem in India and empower the brightest minds to advance the frontiers of cutting-edge technology. By bringing together and supporting some of the best minds in the tech domain, we are pushing the boundaries and shaping the future of AI.