The Indian Railways Start Ups Policy is an important initiative in the field of innovation through participation of start-ups and other entities aiming to promote ‘innovative culture’ in the country for co-creation and co-innovation in the railway sector, stated East Coast Railway General Manager (I/C) Sharad Kumar Srivastav in a Press meet held at ECoR headquarters here on Friday.

Representatives from various start-ups, students from various engineering and management institutes also participated in the discussion about the benefits of the start ups for the Railways.

 All Principal Heads of the Departments of East Coast Railway along with Chief Public Relations Officer Biswajit Sahu, Deputy General Manager AK Mishra and Secretary to General Manager Biswajit Bhoi were present.

They discussed on the policy known as ‘StartUps for Railways’ launched by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on June 13. The policy aims to develop cost-effective, implementable, scalable solutions, functional prototypes and innovative products for addressing quality, reliability and maintainability related issues of the Indian Railways, they said.

The Indian Railway Innovation Policy include grant up to Rs1.5 crore to innovator on equal sharing basis with provision of milestone-wise payment. Besides, 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, they added.