New Delhi: The National Innovation Council (NIC) on Tuesday decided to set up innovation centres in the universities that fall under the 40 industry clusters which it has identified across the country.

"A decision was taken by the NIC here to identify universities in the 40 identified clusters where innovation centres would be created to connect relevant stakeholders and promote innovations," said an official statement, issued after the council meeting.The industrial clusters include Panipat, Surat, Ludhiana, Faridabad, Jalandhar, Pithanpur, Moradabad, Gurgaon, Coimbatore, Tirupur, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

The statement said the council, headed by Sam Pitroda, has also asked all state governments to set up innovation councils to drive innovation. Besides, the council has written to the governments to set up autonomous sectoral innovation councils, aligned to the ministries, to help develop competitive advantage in multiple sectors.  These councils, the statement added, would aim at coopting domain experts and other stakeholders to prepare a roadmap for innovations for the next decade for identified sectors. The council is in the process of setting up $1 billion innovation fund to create knowledge base in the country.

The others who attended the meeting include former president Nasscom Kiran Karnik, director general-CSIR Samir K Brahmachari and noted filmmaker Shekhar Kapur.