New Delhi, Aug 03: The Government of India has launched an umbrella program ‘NIDHI’ (National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations) to foster innovation among the StartUps in the country, said Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Dr Jitendra Singh informed that the NIDHI program has various components to support innovations, StartUps as well as the StartUp incubation ecosystem in the country.
The NIDHI- PRAYAS (Promoting and Accelerating Young and Aspiring Innovators and Startups) program at the Proof-of-Concept level provides mentoring and financial support to innovators for converting their ideas into prototypes, he said, adding, “NIDHI Entrepreneurs-In-Residence (EIR) Program provides fellowships to the students opting for entrepreneurship. The NIDHI Seed Support Program provides availability of early-stage seed support funding to startups and the NIDHI Accelerator program speeds up the investment readiness of the StartUps.”
The NIDHI program has been helpful in creating state-of-the-art infrastructure for incubating StartUps in technology sectors through Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) and Centres of Excellence (CoE), he said.
The minister also underlined that the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is playing an active role in conceptualising and developing state-of-the-art Incubation facilities for translating technology and products and handholding entrepreneurs, StartUps, and MSMEs so as to ensure the transfer of the benefit of S&T interventions to the Society, Industry and the Country.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, “CSIR today is one of the leading R&D organizations in the country to set up Incubation Centres across its labs using innovative models/approaches. In addition to the above, few Common Research and Technology Development Hubs (CRTDHs) for industrial R&D innovation, dedicated to MSMEs, start-ups and individual innovators have also been set up at CSIR with the support of DSIR.”
He said the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) has initiated the Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE 2.0) Scheme with an aim to promote technology-based entrepreneurship through financial and technical support to incubators.
National Agriculture Innovation Fund of ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) promotes the StartUps related to agri-tech under incubation activities in ICAR Network wherein it has established Agri-business Incubator (ABIs) centres in 50 Institutes, Dr Singh said and underlined that through CSIR incubation centres, 300 startups/incubatees have been supported so far.
DST is supporting TBIs/STEPs primarily in and around academic, research, technical and management institutes to tap innovations and technologies for startup creation, he said.
Measures taken by DST to ensure the success of the established network of STEPs & TBIs include support via virtual incubation of the startups for a better outreach throughout the country, the union minister said, adding that in order to motivate students to become job providers rather than job seekers, NIDHI Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) program is an additional measure taken by DST.
