The Indian government is planning to set up 100 new incubation centres, while scaling-up the existing ones and establish 500 ‘Atal tinkering labs’ for schools, under the new initiatives of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), launched by NITI Aayog. The details:
Atal Incubation Centres (AIC)
- can be setup for manufacturing, transport, energy , health, education, agriculture, water and sanitation.
- The government will provide support to academic and non-academic institutions (companies/technology parks/group of individuals) to establish new incubation centres across India.
- The government has pledged an initial grant of Rs. 10 crore for establishing AICs over a period of 5 years towards capital investment, operations, and maintenance expenses.
- AIM will also provide Rs. 10 crore over a period of two years to scale up existing incubation centres.
Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) will be set up in schools across India, where young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).
- will provide an initial “establishment grant” of Rs 10 lakh to schools (grade VI–XII) across India.
- Rs 10 lakh will be provided for each lab over 5 years for operational expenses.
- NITI Aayog has called for applications to be submitted online from eligible schools, organisations and individuals for the three schemes. The last date for submission of application is 27th June, 2016.
Startups incubation program by governments
– SETU program for startups: In February 2015, a “techno-financial incubation and facilitation program” called the Self Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) had been proposed, and Rs 1000 crore was initially set aside for the same.
– In April, Telangana government had announced policies and initiatives to help promote startups and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in the state.
– In March, The Tamil Nadu Government and IT industry lobby group Nasscom had set-up a startup warehouse in Chennai. Nasscom had also set-up another startup warehouse in Bangalore with the help of the Karnataka Government in 2014. It also has startup warehouses in Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Kochi, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.
– In December 2014, it had been announced that Incubation centres (National Centre of Excellence) under PPP mode with NASSCOM and other industry players will be set up, to host startups, SMEs and students.
– In the budget presentation of July 2014, the finance minister had proposed a nationwide “District level Incubation and Accelerator Program” for incubation of new ideas and providing necessary support to accelerate entrepreneurship.
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