Srinagar: Achieving another milestone towards excellence in agricultural education and innovation, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Education and Technology of Kashmir has figured among the top performers in ATAL Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA).
The Ministry of Education has placed SKUAST-K in ‘Band Excellent’ category – the second-best performance after the ‘Outstanding Category’ –in Atal Innovation Ranking in the group of government and government-aided universities or deemed to be universities of the country, said a handout of the varsity.
This is at the back of SKUAST-K achieving the sixth rank among state agricultural universities in India, it said.
ARIIA is implemented through AICTE and MoE’s Innovation Cell to rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in India on indicators related to promotion and support of ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development’ amongst students and faculties. In this edition of ARIIA, MoE has divided the ranking into four categories: Outstanding, Band-Excellent, Band-Performer, Band-Promising, and Band- Beginner).
“SKUAST-K, which participated for the first time in the all-India ranking competition, has secured its place in ‘Band Excellent’ figuring in league with IITs, NITS, IIMS and other top-notch universities of the country. This year 1438 Higher Education Institutions of the country had participated in the ranking system,” it added.
Vice Chancellor, SKUAST-K Prof Nazir Ahmad said, “We got ‘Band Excellent’ in the first attempt, which is recognition of our efforts towards creating an ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in the university and taking a lead in state agricultural universities. For future, our target is to figure in the ‘Outstanding’ category in the Atal Ranking.
For the past few years, SKUAST-K has taken a host of initiatives under the World Bank-ICAR funded National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP) for promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship culture in the university. Under NAHEP, the university also carried out a host of national and international training programmes on innovations and entrepreneurship for the students and teachers.
The outcome-based learning programmes on innovations and entrepreneurship in collaboration with Lemon School of Business, Nagpur and West Sydney University, Australia and Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand are a few to mention of. These programmes catapulted into an array of idea generation by the students, resulting in securing five BIG BIRAC grants from DBT for incubation of the “Proof of Concept” which in itself is a great achievement for the University and having the privilege of being the only university with five BIRAC grants in India.
The university has earned five Patents for the innovations and have made 20 applications for registering the patents on other discoveries during this period by the teachers. Five startup companies have been registered under the Companies Act based on the innovations by the students of SKUAST-K.
“This is just the beginning of the journey of SKUAST-K treading the path of innovations and entrepreneurship under the leadership of the new Vice Chancellor,” said Ahmad.

KR Desk