KSUM’s ‘Innovation Train’ with over 950 students sets off for IEDC summit in Kasaragod

Minister Shri V Sivankutty flags off chartered train

Trivandrum / December 21, 2025

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec. 21: ‘Innovation Train’, a novel initiative of Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), set off for Kasaragod from the state capital today with over 950 campus innovators on board for attending the IEDC Summit to be held in Kasaragod district on Monday (December 22).

Organised by KSUM and jointly hosted by L.B.S. College of Engineering, Kasaragod and Central University of Kerala, Kasaragod, IEDC 2025 marks the 10th anniversary edition of this flagship event.

Minister for General Education and Labour Shri V Sivankutty flagged off the journey at Thiruvananthapuram Central Railway Station.

Imparting an added dynamism to IEDC initiative (Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre), student innovators from across the state boarded the chartered train.

During the journey, the students will engage in ideating solutions for a range of grassroot-level problems.

The Innovation Train is designed as a real-world, working innovation environment, which functions as a thematic ideation zone equipped with structured problem-statement boards, guided design-thinking sessions, rapid validation tools, mentor interaction slots and live pitch corners.

Students will be encouraged to identify local challenges from their respective districts—spanning livelihoods, public services, climate resilience, agriculture, fisheries, healthcare and education, and translate them into solution-oriented ideas during the journey.

The journey starts with an ice breaking session, followed by mentorship and skilling sessions, along with talks by student founders.

A moving Hackathon organized by IEDC and TinkerHub to build Agentic AI projects is also a highlight of the train journey.

A ‘Trainathon’ organised by Unique World Robotics (UWR) will also be conducted during the journey.

For the ‘Trainathon’, participants have to identify and solve real-world challenges related to passenger experience, operations, safety, and accessibility while travelling from Ernakulam North to Kasaragod.

Selected teams receive mentorship, access to UWR Labs, and continued support to take ideas from concept to MVP.

According to KSUM CEO Shri Anoop Ambika, “The Innovation Train is an ideal that seeks to build a clear pathway from grassroots problem identification to institutional support and market linkage.

This also reinforced KSUM’s commitment to inclusive, bottom-up innovation by ensuring that youth from all regions have equal opportunity to contribute to Kerala’s startup and innovation ecosystem, he said.

Students travelling the Innovation Train are expected to come out with more than 200 well-defined, implementable ideas and problem statements, many of them rooted in lived experiences and community needs.

The IEDC summits had over the years acted as a catalyst for student-led startups and campus innovations.

The IEDC network, spread across engineering, arts and science campuses and universities in Kerala, has played a pivotal role in nurturing grassroots innovation.

By empowering students at the campus level with early exposure to entrepreneurship, prototyping support and mentor access, IEDCs have enabled ideas from classrooms, hostels and local communities to evolve into startups, social enterprises and scalable solutions.

As part of the summit, a Nodal Officers’ meet was held at CUK campus on Sunday, where workshops and seminars for nodal officers were conducted.

Shri Anoop Ambika made the Cluster Level presentation at the program.

An open mike session for nodal officers was also held.

A founders meet where founders from Kasaragod district shared their experiences and insights was held following the officers’ meet.

The IEDC Summit 2025 on Monday will bring together students, startups, investors, policymakers and ecosystem leaders. Ideas generated onboard the Innovation Train will receive visibility at the summit through pitch sessions, innovation showcases and curated interactions with experts and funding agencies.

The Innovation Train builds on this strong foundation by providing a statewide convergence platform, connecting isolated campus ideas into a shared innovation pipeline.

Sector-focused ideathons and hackathon-style sessions onboard will address areas critical to Kerala’s development, including agri and food-tech, coastal and blue economy solutions, responsible tourism, circular economy, health-tech, climate-tech and AI for local language and governance applications.

Selected ideas will be enabled to move forward to structured mentoring, proof-of-concept development and incubation opportunities through KSUM-supported programmes and get showcased at the IEDC Summit.

Ends