Government of India will shortly launch Atal New India Challenge, as a part of Atal Innovation Mission, aimed at supporting innovators to create products/solutions based on advanced technologies in areas of national importance and social relevance through a grant-based mechanism. This was disclosed by Shri Ramnathan Ramanan, Mission Director of Atal Innovation Mission.
He was speaking at an outreach event organised by AIC-LMCP Foundation. Panel Discussion was held as a part of the event, in which Prof.(Dr) Navin Sheth, Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Technological University (GTU), Shri K.K. Nirala, Director of Technical education, Gujarat, Dr. Mahesh Chhabaria, Principal of L.M. College of Pharmacy, Prof.(Dr) J.S. Yadav, Director (Research) of Indrashil University, Shri Chiranjiv Patel from GCCI and Ashwin Joshi from IIM-Ciie participated in the panel discussion. Rama Mundra, coach, trainer, and visiting faculty at IIM-A was the moderator of the discussion. During the discussion, experts put emphasis on public-private partnership, networking of incubation centres and bridging the gap between incubation centres and innovations. Principal Chhabaria said that Pharma start ups have bright opportunities as Government is pushing forward many programmes for transformation of Healthcare sector. He advised students to remain motivated and be positive.
Dr. Sheth advised students to take up the issues of rural and social problems and initiate innovative start up project which can solve such problems. GTU has been selected by Niti Ayog for Rs. 10 Crore grant under Atal Incubation Centre. GTU will create a Fab Lab and develop hi tech incubation centre. GTU will use the grant to help innovators who are focusing on developing new technologies to solve social & industrial problems. Besides GTU, Indrasheel Institute of Science and Technology, GLS and Gujarat University also got grant under the scheme. Teams from these 4 institutions were felicitated by Shri Ramanan.
Shri Ramnan told about the vision of the Atal New India Challenge. He said that the purpose of the scheme is two-fold: (1) to help create products from existing technologies relevant for national and social causes (productization) & (2) to help new deep-tech products find markets and early customers (commercialization) in the context of India. MSMEs, Startups, R&D organisations, Academicians, Innovators will be benefited from this. The Atal New India Challenges initiative by Atal Innovation Mission is aimed at supporting innovators creating products based on advanced technologies in areas of national importance and social relevance through a grant based mechanism, with access to handholding, mentoring and other technical support. This program attempts to fill this gap in the ecosystem by providing grants oriented towards creating commercializable products from existing technologies, to fill needs across various economic and social sectors. He said in a presentation that India is a billion people country with million challenges and the challenges are million opportunities. Artificial Intelligence is a buzzword now. Around the world fusion of technologies like IOT, Robotics etc. are talk of the town. Technology is changing very rapidly.
Snaps from the event:
