US Based Chipmaker Intel Joins Hands With Govt To Set Up Accelerator Plan In India

In a bid to encourage the young entrepreneurs and promote innovation among startups, the US-based chipmaker Intel and the Department of Science & Technology has announced partnership to develop solutions for driving technology adoption in India.

The entries are open for the ‘Innovate for Digital India’ challenge. The programme will give access to at least 20 teams a grant of INR 2 lakh per team. For the execution part, Intel has partnered with IIM Ahmedabad’s centre for innovation incubation and entrepreneurship (CIIE) as the execution partner.

Speaking on this development, Sachin Kelkar, Head Developer & Partner programs, APAC, Intel said, “Innovation in India is a challenge. Research shows that India’s ranking globally in innovation has come down. Innovation has to happen locally by creating more IPs. The innovation we are seeing in India today are business led and not technology led.”

Intel, CIIE and MyGov have decided to work together for application management, program facilitation and popularisation. Under this programme, entrepreneurs, startups, academicians etc will get access to a three-month accelerator programme in Bangalore and Pune.

In the second phase, the accelerator programme will shortlist 20 ideas at Bangalore and give 12 weeks of mentorship in Bangalore and Pune to develop minimum viable products. Going forward, the top 10 teams will be identified and will get access to grants up to INR 5 lakh per team.

Besides, Top 10 team will also get to show their products to key market players. Out of them, the three finalist will get chance to work with industry players for productization. In Pune both CIIE and College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) will give support to teams in terms of infrastructure support.

“The MyGov platform is designed to link government and citizens. We are proud to support this challenge by connecting the government with entrepreneurs and innovators to come forward with solutions made in India for India,” said Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO, MyGov.

The innovate for Digital India Challenge aims to encourage the creation of intuitive, easy to use products & solutions that drive access to services imperative for development such as financial services, healthcare, education & e-governance Innovation to create citizen’s device platform with features that are relevant and drive mass adoption of technology such as biometric sensing capabilities, peripherals using other sensors, intuitive user interface, gesture recognition, and multi-lingual & voice support, explained Kelkar.

Earlier in January this year, Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel Corp. announced its plans to invest in Indian startups working on the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2015. On this, Kumud Srinivasan, India president of Intel said, “In India, as IoT takes off, I expect we will see more startup activity, and hence more potential for investment in India.”

More details can be found at www.innovatefordigitalindia.intel.in.