Kerala’s startup ecosystem got a major fillip as the state government Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Airbus BizLab, a global aerospace accelerator, part of the Airbus group.

The MoU was exchanged between Siddharth Balachandran, Leader, Airbus Bizlab India and Dr Saji Gopinath, CEO, Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan here.

Under the MoU, an Innovation Centre will be set up in Thiruvananthapuram, which will be the nodal body for planning and executing all the activities to help the startups.

The ceremony was attended by Tom Jose, Chief Secretary, M Sivasankar, Secretary, Kerala IT; Margit Hellwig-Boette,German Consul General; M C Dathan, Scientific Advisor to the CM; Hrishikesh Nair, CEO, Technopark, among others.

“We are confident that this partnership with Airbus Bizlab will help embed innovation in the industrial ecosystem of Kerala. It will up-skill the local youth and will enhance employability,” Vijayan said.

Airbus BizLab will also provide support and mentoring for startups in Kerala and conduct regular workshops and discussions with experts from aerospace and defence sectors, a press release said.

Further, the France-headquartered company, which has set up facilities in Bengaluru, Toulouse (France), Hamburg (Germany) and Madrid (Spain) to create a global network of business accelerators, is to run training programmes to acquaint participants with aerospace technologies.

Also, the company will identify opportunities for Kerala to adapt aerospace technologies across sectors and bring all the relevant Airbus teams and startups to demonstrate technologies.

After successful demonstration, it will help the innovation centre to sign partnerships and deploy the technologies.

“It is a landmark agreement that will give a huge fillip to Keralas efforts to nurture innovations and startups in the aerospace and defence sectors.

It will help the startups in the state to leverage the expertise of Airbus in transforming their innovative ideas into scalable businesses,” according to Tom Jose.

The initiative aims to foster local talent in the aerospace domain and help promising startups to contribute towards shaping the future of flying not only in India but the world,Anand E Stanley, President and Managing Director, Airbus India and South Asia.