Bengaluru, Feb 16 (IANS): The New York-Bengaluru co-headquartered Vee Technologies has become the pioneering company for developing indigenous ‘seam sealing machines for making personal protection equipment (PPE) kits in the country.

Jointly designed and developed with Tamil Nadu-based Sona College of Technology, the machines helped beat the six-month long wait time to source the machines from Japan or China in the Covid-hit 2020.

The AICTE took note of this industry-academia partnership and the department of fashion technology team at Sona College of Technology won the ‘AICTE-CII 2020 award for industry-academia linkage.

"This is a showcase of the Indian engineering prowess and a ‘sangam' of industry and academia to jointly design and manufacture a product in the true spirit of building an Atmanirbhar Bharat," Vee Technologies CEO Chocko Valliappa said in a statement on Tuesday.

A core team of project engineers from Vee Technologies took up the challenge to develop seam-sealing machines for PPE kits.

They then connected with researchers from the fashion technology department of Sona College of Technology.

"The teams came up with design ideas shared over Zoom calls. Several iterations later, the design was finalised. In the middle of a total lockdown, sourcing parts also was challenging," Valliappa said.

However, within no time, the seam-sealing machines that matched the imported version were ready.

The indigenous machines were soon working side by side with Japanese machines, matching their exacting standards in making PPE kits, Valliappa informed.

As the global healthcare industry scrambled to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic last year, Vee Technologies was listed among the top healthcare employers in the Modern Healthcare's ‘Best Places to Work in Healthcare 2020' among the top 150 companies.