PANAJI: Information Technology Minister Rohan Khaunte urged students to use technology, innovation and artificial intelligence to develop solutions to real-world problems, saying the next global innovation could emerge from a Goan college campus.
Speaking at the Seva Sankalp Abhiyan-Sankalp Manthan programme in Tiswadi on Monday, Khaunte cited the early beginnings of Facebook, Google and Snapchat to underline the potential of student-led innovation.
He said Facebook was started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates while at Harvard, while Google was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a university project at Stanford. Snapchat, he added, was developed by Evan Spiegel and his classmates as a classroom project. “Today, the whole game has changed. That simple campus project which started in 2004 has evolved into Meta, a global empire which talks about Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,” Khaunte said. “The next global innovation that can happen might be from a person who is sitting right now in this particular room today,” he told the students.
Khaunte said Goa had considerable talent and innovation potential, but students needed opportunities and the confidence to turn their ideas into viable projects. “Our Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks about Yuva Shakti as the driving engine of our nation. We believe that youth-led development cannot be possible without your energy, without your creativity and without your ambition to do something,” he said.
Khaunte also stressed that artificial intelligence was no longer a technology of the future but a tool students needed to understand and use responsibly. “AI is the present. AI is disrupting. AI is not the future anymore,” he said. At the same time, he cautioned students against allowing AI tools to replace independent thinking. “You should take inputs, but your mind should start deciding what is good for you, what is bad for you, what you should take. Judgment is also important,” he said.
Khaunte said the government was targeting making 50,000 youth AI-ready by 2030, with a focus on preparing graduates for the changing technology and IT landscape. He also announced support for student projects, saying colleges would be provided Rs 50,000 each to support project teams identified by the respective institutions. “When we started going to our colleges and especially technical education institutes, we realised that this was the gap in these colleges,” he said. Khaunte said Goa currently had 846 DPIIT-recognised startups, nearly 400 of which were women-led. “Our full innovation ecosystem is very inclusive and, most importantly, growing very fast,” he said.
He identified three core skills students needed to cultivate: spotting everyday problems, starting with available resources, and developing resilience. “Spot everyday needs. It did not start with very complex problems, but it can start by solving very small everyday things that annoy us,” Khaunte said.
He urged students not to wait for ideal conditions, pointing out that several global technology companies began as small student projects. “All they needed was a desk, a table, a laptop, a small room with the basic facilities, and that is where the ideas got innovated and started translating,” he said.
Khaunte also encouraged students to participate in hackathons and initiatives such as the Goa Innovation Challenge, where they can work on issues related to tourism, health, disaster management, climate change,e and the environment. “You will face a lot of setbacks. You will have to see and find, not get discouraged when some idea gets rejected multiple times,” he said. “Others may not see your potential initially, but unless you believe in yourself, nothing goes up. So keep believing in yourself. Keep putting that vision together. Keep redefining your work. Keep refining your work.”
Khaunte said the government was bringing real-world challenges directly to campuses because it believed the next major solution for Goa and India could come from students. “We strongly believe that the next big solution for Goa and for India is sitting right here in this room today,” he said, urging students to make the most of available opportunities and “together build a Goa of tomorrow.”
