Madhya Pradesh Startup India Yatra: 71 Startups receive 110 Incubation Offers

The DIPP-led Startup India programme continued in its mission to support entrepreneurs by organising the fifth Startup India Yatra in Madhya Pradesh. The Yatra drew more than 5,000 participants with 427 startups pitching their ideas to the Yatra team.

The event culminated in a Grand Finale, with 136 shortlisted startups making final pitches. The event was held at Sri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

The selected startups were put through an accelerator programme, where they received training in preparing pitches for the Grand Finale. As a result of the training, 71 startups received 110 incubation offers from seven incubators.

Further, cash prizes worth a total of INR 10 Lakh were awarded to 16 aspiring entrepreneurs. The prizes ranged between INR 25,000 and INR 75,000.

A Startup India Yatra van, equipped with facilities to enable individuals and startups to pitch their ideas, travelled to 13 cities across Madhya Pradesh, starting from capital city Bhopal. The aim of the Yatra was to spread awareness about Startup India and the Madhya Pradesh Startup Policy.

The Yatra started on July 17 and the van was to travel to 25 colleges and cover 10 districts and 15 institutions in a span of 30 days.

The van had experts on board to advise startups and entrepreneurs on how to pitch an idea and get incubated, thereby scaling their idea to an enterprise level.

Startup India Yatra’s technology partner — Gurugram-based video personality evaluation platform Shrofile — recorded the ideas of entrepreneurs from Madhya Pradesh via the Startup India mobile van. These were then shared with the Startup India team for evaluation and selection.

Day-long boot camps were also organised in eight cities as part of the Yatra. The camps included presentations on startup policies followed by extensive ideation workshops.

Startup India Yatra: Nurturing Entrepreneurship

An initiative of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), the Startup India Yatra aims to promote entrepreneurship in remote areas of the country by travelling through every state.

The Yatra, which works in conjunction with the Centre’s ambitious Startup India scheme, travels to one state every month. It also promotes job creation in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns and cities.

A total of 19,000 students across 40 districts have benefitted from the boot camps organised as part of the Yatra, with more than 90 receiving grants or incubation offers from state governments.

The Centre’s Startup India programme is aimed at building a robust startup ecosystem in the country for nurturing innovation and providing opportunities to budding entrepreneurs. The programme claims to have registered 10,999 startups in all, generating employment for 1,09,869 people.

Starting Up India, One City At A Time

Prior to Madhya Pradesh, the Startup India Yatra has been hosted in four other states — Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttarakhand.

In Gujarat, the Yatra was organised in five cities and drew more than 5,000 participants. Around 1,000 startups pitched their ideas and 22 incubation offers were made by IIM Ahmedabad and MICA.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Yatra travelled to seven cities, drawing more than 6,000 participants. Around 1,000 startups pitched their ideas and 100 were selected for incubation. The selected startups received incubation offers from IIT BHU, IIT Kanpur, iB Hubs, BIMTECH, IIM Lucknow, and others.

In Odisha, the initiative claims to have impacted over 8,000 potential entrepreneurs while travelling across 10 destinations.

In Uttarakhand, the Yatra travelled to 13 districts across eight cities and claims to have helped more than 3,500 aspiring entrepreneurs, students and individuals. The Uttarakhand edition of the Yatra reportedly received more than 1,000 startup pitches and rewarded and offered incubation to over 20 startups.

The efforts of the Centre and various state government to promote entrepreneurship actively in the country through the Startup India Mission and Yatra are providing just the right impetus to Indian startups to help them accelerate their business ideas.

[The development was reported by PTI.]