Mr. R. M. P. Jawahar, Executive Director, TREC-STEP has been Awarded “ The International Champion of Business Incubation for the year 2006 from United Kingdom Business Incubation (UKBI) Association”. This is the first time the award is instituted and a great honour for TREC-STEP to receive the first award. The award is for the individuals / institutions who have striven to share good practice across the globe, breaking down cultural and or linguistic barriers for the good of entrepreneurs and businesses the world over.

UK Business Incubation (UKBI) has been the UK’s principal and successful authority on incubation, incubation development and good practice since 1998. UK has nearly 300 Business Incubators now and UKBI has helped the UK government and regional development agencies to build a thriving business incubation infrastructure, making increasingly significant contributions to local, regional and national economic growth, as thousands of incubated clients move out of incubation environments and achieve sustainable commercial success in their own right. UKBI’s focus on high quality, professional incubation has helped a wide range of organizations to create the right environment for nurtured and supported growth, including universities, science parks, research and development laboratories, commercial clusters and social regeneration projects.

Mr. N. C. V Harish Rangacharya, from Hyderabad, TREC-STEP promoted entrepreneur, has been awarded ‘the Bharti Entrepreneur of the Year 2004 Award’ by Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), an acknowledged national resource institution for Entrepreneurship Development in the country. Mr. Rangacharya is a post graduate civil engineer from IIT Madras. He did the residential Entrepreneurship Development Programme at TREC-STEP in 1989-90 which inspired him and provided him invaluable inputs in promoting new ventures. He started his small IT venture in the pre-IT era. He has pioneered Knowledge Process Outsourcing before the word outsourcing was coined and employs nearly 600 engineers. He has also bought a company at US. He has trained a batch of street urchins and visually challenged persons as data entry operators and provided them quality livelihoods as a part of his corporate social responsibility.

TREC-STEP has been awarded the ‘Best Innovation Award 2002’ by the India Railway Board for converting the historic steam locomotive of the Nilagiri Mountain Railway from coal firing system to oil firing one. The Nilagiri Mountain Railway (NMR), is one of the famous few surviving steam heritage railways in the world, over 100 years old and this is a UN heritage site now. The Indian Railways had been facing a problem of non-availability of good quality coal for nearly 2 decades coupled with other problems such as tough manual labour required for shoveling 4 tonnes of coal per trip and also the implications of environmental pollution, that threaten the very existence of the steam locomotive, which is a major Tourist attraction, in the Nilagiris.

TREC-STEP with a group of its own entrepreneurs has taken up this unique and challenging project of upgrading the heritage steam locomotive. The steam loco conversion by TREC-STEP has given highly successful results for Indian railways by eliminating the fuel problem by introducing oil firing, eliminating the grueling labour and improved the emission levels considerably for preserving the environment. The project therefore rightfully, is an important milestone technology development project for TREC-STEP and Indian Railways. The project has won for TREC-STEP the “Best Innovation Award by India Railway Board”, for the year 2003.

TREC-STEP received ‘the Best Performing STEP Award 2001’ from Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. TREC-STEP is one of the first STEP experiments in Indian for promoting technocrats as entrepreneurs. TREC-STEP with its first 10 years of existence promoted nearly 160 start-up ventures of first generation entrepreneurs. TREC-STEP has served as model for other institutions in the country and consistently worked with Department of Science and Technology until now for promoting new incubators and provided all support for establishment of new knowledge based science and technology start-up ventures in the country.