The Indian Railways ‘Start Ups’ Policy is an important initiative in the field of innovation through participation of start-ups and other entities which aims to promote ‘Innovative Culture’ in the country for co-creation and co-innovation in Railways.
“The aim is to identify problems and deal with them with this innovative process,” said the DRM of Sambalpur, Pradeep Kumar in a media conference here on Monday.
To make it more effective, the divisional office here facilitated the engineering students of VSSUT Burla to participate in the discussion about the benefits of the start ups for the Railways and make them aware of it.
The policy “StartUps for Railways” was launched by Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on June 13 that aims at developing cost-effective, implementable, scalable solutions, functional prototypes and innovative products for addressing quality, reliability and maintainability related issues of the Indian Railways, informed the DRM.
The policy would also leverage innovative technologies developed by Indian start-ups/MSMEs/innovators/entrepreneurs to improve operational efficiency and safety of Indian Railways, he added.
“Start-ups, as defined and recognised by the ‘Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India; any Indian company incorporated under the Companies Act, primarily a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Individual innovators and R and D institutions are also encouraged to apply where they can get grant up to Rs 1.5 crore,” said the DRM. “A complete process from floating of problem statement to development of prototype is online through a dedicated ‘Indian Railway Innovation Portal’ with defined time line to make it transparent and objective,” he stated further.
