New Delhi: International Centre of Automotive Technology (ICAT) on Friday has announced the launch of the automotive technology e-portal ASPIRE, which stands for Automotive Solutions Portal for Industry, Research and Education.

In a release, ICAT said that Department of Heavy Industry (DHI), Govt of India, under the leadership of Secretary, Heavy Industries, has decided to promote innovation, R&D and product development in India for various sectors. The new automotive technology e-portal is claimed to be a part of that strategy.

As it said, a step towards this mission is the creation of technology platform e-portals where such technology development, information exchange and innovation can be facilitated. It further informed that 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 the automotive sector.

The e-portal is claimed to be facilitating 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 that will be promoted here would include R&D, 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, claims ICAT.

The e-portal will aim to bring together the automotive OEMs, Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 companies, R&D institutions and academia on matters involving technology advancements, informs ICAT.

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