Kochi, Jan 12 (IANS): A US-based non-profit organisation Saturday offered free internship opportunities to bright Indian students in American engineering colleges.

The Lab-X Foundation launched the pilot programme in collaboration with Startup Village here to facilitate the internship opportunities and outreach programmes in the US.

Startup Village here, the first PPP (public private partnership) model incubator in the country, is promoted by the central government at Technopark with MobME Wireless.

It focuses on mobile-internet companies.

"Most Indian engineering schools have lack of research and development and entrepreneurial effort to build a robust high-tech environment. Barring the IIT'ians, majority of the students do not have any global exposure or hands-on learning experience," said Sampriti Bhattacharyya, director of Lab-X Foundation and a doctoral student at MIT.

Lab-X Foundation is set to address this problem by organising structured programmes to promote research, innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the country and build the next generation leaders.

Lab-X Foundation was co-founded by Sampriti, Ketan Dande and Chris Garry to provide students in developing countries with opportunities to gain practical, hands-on experience.