Hyderabad: The Jain Group of Institutions (JGI), a leading educational group and US-based Seer Akademi, a pioneer in engineering education and incubation, on Thursday announced a joint venture agreement to form India's most advanced electronics labs and incubation centers.

The first laboratory with an investment of $15 million is coming up in Bangalore.

Under the JV, the two companies plan to set up a satellite centre of the laboratory in Hyderabad. They also propose to establish 20 full-fledged centres across the country.

Srikant Jadcherla, chairman and CEO, Seer Akademi told reporters here that the laboratory was modelled after premier facilities like ITRI in Taiwan and IMEC in Belgium but adapted to the needs of Indian academia and industry.

He said they would have a tie-up with universities to offer to offer MS and PG diploma programs in electronics and computer engineering disciplines such as VLSI, embedded systems, telecommunications, solar PV, core computer science and advanced software engineering/information technology.

T.S. Sudhir, facilitator-techno entrepreneurship initiatives, JGI said there was a severe shortage of manpower in the field of electronics in the country at all levels. According to an estimate, India needs 2.8 million people by 2020 to meet the growing demand. IANS