DST commits Rs 500 Cr for Startup India

To realize the prime minister's ambitious initiative on Startup India, the Department of Science & Technology (DST) aims to bring both speed and scale to transform the startup ecosystem in the country and has committed Rs 500 crores. The union minister for science & technology and earth sciences, Dr Harsh Vardhan has announced NIDHI (National Initiative for Development and Harnessing Innovations), an umbrella program pioneered by the DST for nurturing ideas and innovations into successful startups. NIDHI focuses on building a seamless and innovation driven entrepreneurial ecosystem especially by channelizing youth towards it and thereby bringing in the positive impact on the socio-economic development of the country. The program aims to provide technological solutions not only to the pressing needs of the society but also targets to create new avenues for wealth and job creation. NIDHI, by design connects and strengthens all the links of the innovation chain from scouting to sustaining to securing to scaling to showcasing, because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The key stakeholders of NIDHI includes various departments and ministries of the central government, state governments, academic and R&D institutions, mentors, financial institutions, angel investors, venture capitalists, industry champions and private sectors. There are eight components of NIDHI that support each stage of a budding startup from idea to market. The first component PRAYAS (Promoting and Accelerating Young and Aspiring Innovators & Startups), launched on 2nd September, 2016, aims to support innovators to build prototypes of their ideas by providing a grant up to Rs 10 lakhs and an access to Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab). The final component is the Seed Support System which provides up to one crore rupees per start up and is implemented through Technology Business Incubators. During the current financial year with a view to drive the innovation and startup centric new initiatives in a scaled up manner for its wider outreach across the country, a 450 per cent increase in allocation (Rs 180 crores) has been made in the department’s budget. DST has established more than 100 Technology Business Incubators in academic and R&D institutions of repute. These institutions include IITs, IIMs, NITs and other institutions. Each of these incubator is focused on a technology domain and all of these combined together house more than 2,000 startups currently and offer a total incubation space of approximately 7 lakh square feet. The minister also mentioned that various successful and high growth stories in affordable health care, diagnostics, applications of unmanned aerial vehicles, renewable energy, service oriented online platforms, payment gateways etc. have emerged out of these incubators. In the recently concluded National Expert Advisory Committee Meeting on 3rd September, 2016, proposal to establish 6 Centers of Excellence were decided, at SINE-IIT Bombay, Venture Center-NCL Pune, CIIE-IIM Ahmedabad etc., 14 Technology Business Incubators which include IIT Patna and Mizoram University etc. Ten more Incubators to be supplemented with Seed Support Systems for startups include Startup Oasis-Jaipur, Amrita TBI-Kollam, Venture Center, NCL-Pune etc. establishing a Research Park at IIT Gandhinagar. Apart from setting the ground ready for the prospective startups in an enabling an environment of Incubators, DST has also partnered with large corporates like Intel, Lockheed Martin, Texas Instruments and Boeing to initiate variety of technology driven and innovation based programs to promote startups. DST has also partnered with department of higher education, MHRD to establish research parks and startup centers in various academic institutions of national importance.