Gujarat Government announces India’s first Student Startup and Innovation Policy

The Gujarat Government in the first week of January 2017 introduced India’s first Student Startup and Innovation Policy. The announcement was made by the State Chief Minister Vijaybhai Rupani.

In addition, a State Innovation Fund with a corpus of Rs. 200 crore will be provided to the students during the next five years. For this, Rs. 100 crore will be allocated by the State Government while the remaining amount will be met through the internal sources.

The initiative aims at making qualitative improvement in the conventional education system. It also seeks to create an encouraging environment to infuse creative thinking and problem-solving attitude among students.

As a part of the initiative, the students will be provided with pre-incubation support that aims at helping students to convert ideas of students from Proof of Concept up to Minimum Viable Prototype and to create a support system for Patent filing.

In last two years, many states, such as Bihar, Odisha, Telangana, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Rajasthan, have launched their startup policies in a bid to boost up their startup ecosystem.

Key highlights

• The initiative was developed under the aegis of Education Department. The State Government will provide Rs 200 crore as State Innovation Fund (SIF) during the next five years.

• The initiative aims at promoting innovation and pre-incubation awareness amongst students of higher education.

• It will encourage the students to undertake innovative projects related to society, industries and community.

• The experts at institute level will offer guidance and will evaluate the projects. They will also provide a platform for commercialisation of such projects.

• Under the initiative, complete support will be offered for approval and publication of the research work.

• High-tech facilities like Fab Lab, Common Working Space, Design labs and more will be developed at higher educational institutions.

• Technology platform will be provided via academic programmes, seminars, workshop/Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).