The Central government has broadbased the ‘Start up India, Stand up India’ initiative to encourage innovative ideas by people of various cross-sections, irrespective of their educational background, Union Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Harsh Vardhan has said.
Inaugurating Green Room, a start-up–SME conclave organised by the Mar Baselios College of Engineering and Technology and other sponsors here on Sunday, Dr. Vardhan said that the Department of Science and Technology (DST) was willing to support budding entrepreneurs who came up with project proposals that were intended to address long-standing problems faced by the public. “The government will stand rock solid behind any innovator by supporting them in all stages of their endeavour from seeding to the ultimate realisation of the goal,” he said.
NIDHI
According to him, the National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations (NIDHI), an umbrella programme that had been launched a year ago, is expected to spur innovations and nurture them into successful start-ups. The scheme has been formulated in a manner that its eight components addressed the national aspirations and the ground realities associated with launching start-ups in the country. These included NIDHI-PRAYAS that is meant to support budding entrepreneurs from the ideation stage to creation of the prototype, NIDHI-Seed for providing early-stage investment, and NIDHI-CoE for establishing centres of excellence to help start-ups to go global. Dr. Vardhan said the DST had established over 110 technology business incubators, focusing on the domain of technology, in educational institutions and research and development (R&D) centres across the country.
Biopharma mission
In the field of biotechnology, the government has launched the National Biopharma Mission to accelerate biopharmaceutical development in the country.
