On August 4, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched 11 start-up challenges in the defence sector.
Meanwhile, the Defence Innovation Organisation has signed partnership agreements with five incubators across the country to support companies/individuals selected to take up the challenge. Forge, an incubation facility by Coimbatore Innovation and Business Incubator, here is among the five partners.
Apart from this, the Coimbatore District Small Industries Association (Codissia), which has submitted a draft Detailed Project Report for a defence innovation hub, has been short-listed by Atal Innovation Mission for support for incubation project. Thus, the city will soon see incubation infrastructure going a notch up to support MSMEs and start-ups in the defence space.
According to Vishwanathan Sahasranamam, co-founder and CEO of Forge, the organisation will conduct outreach programmes from next week and invite applications for the challenges. Researchers, start-ups, students, MSMEs or professionals can apply. The challenges are in a range of fields from unmanned aerial vehicles, and soldier protection systems with sensors to advanced communication systems.
Forge will bring in experts, help with pre-incubation procedures, etc. “We have the infrastructure. But it is more for industrial standards. We need to upgrade it in size and facilities to defence standards,” he said. The incubation facility already has a tie-up with the TelAviv University. “This will give us access to experts,” he says. The Union Government is expected to list the guidelines for selecting the incubatees and also provide financial support to Forge for the five-year project.
V. Sundaram, former president of CODISSIA, said the incubation facilities for defence projects are funded through iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) and each project gets up to ₹1.5 crore. “We are already short-listed for incubation centre. We have given the draft report for the innovation hub. We will work on these two projects together and this will benefit MSMEs here,” he said.
