Tata Group’s CSR arm Tata Trusts has partnered with aerospace major Lockheed Martin and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of the Indian government for the revamped edition of the India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP 2.0).
The IIGP 2.0 will be launched today by President Pranab Mukherjee. This programme focuses on supporting startups in India and in this edition, the focus will be on innovations addressing socio-economic challenges.
The idea is to enable entrepreneurs to develop science and technology-based solutions for the benefit of the society. The partners will be investing $2 million every year through this program.
Speaking about the partnership, Manoj Kumar, Head – Innovations, Tata Trusts, said “Under IIGP2.0 we will search for innovators who are on a mission to fight poverty and underdevelopment. Through our incubation programmes, selected innovators will be able to access the resources they need to create high quality, commercially-viable, accessible and affordable solutions for social impact.”
"The government has been investing $1 million per annum into this programme without any consideration of returns. From this year, the funding has been doubled to $2 million. Now in the new version, we hope to achieve an even better success not only in financial numbers but also improve lives of people at the base of the pyramid," said Harkesh Mittal, head of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology Commercialisation for DST.
The IIGP 2.0 is a public-private partnership that will invest in social and industrial innovations, train innovators in world-class commercialization strategies, offer support for incubation and assist in business development, ultimately taking ideas and Indian technologies into the global marketplace.
"On an average, 50 innovators are picked up every year and 500 innovators have been supported, which have a cumulative market capitalisation of $1 billion," Mittal said.
The programme received 1,500 applications last year, Mittal said. The new edition is slated to run for three years till 2019 with an increased incubator support and provision for seed funding to startups
With inputs from IANS
Image: Mark Doliner