The government has launched a contest on Friday to boost homegrown startups and software product companies with special focus on tier – II towns of the country
“Chunauti” – Next Generation Startup Challenge Contest aims at identifying around three hundred startups working in identified areas and providing them seed funds of up to Rs 25 lakh and other facilities. The contest will identify startups in areas such as – Edu-tech, Agri-tech, Fin-tech solutions, supply chain, logistics, transportation management, infrastructure and remote monitoring.
The government has earmarked a budget of Rs 95 crore over a period of three years for this programme. The scheme was launched by union minister for electronics and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad. This comes after the government has already flagged off contests to promote a homegrown video conferencing tool, chip companies and local mobile applications.
The areas under focus of the contest also include medical healthcare, diagnostic, preventive and psychological care; jobs & skilling, linguistic tools & technologies.
Besides seed fund of up to Rs. 25 Lakh, the startups will also be provided cloud credits from leading cloud service providers. Start-ups who are in the ideation stage may be selected under the pre-incubation programme & mentored for up-to six months to evolve their business plan & solution around the proposed idea. Each start-up under pre-incubation will be paid Rs. 10,000 per month until a period of 6 months.
The startups selected through Chunauti will be given incubation facilities, mentorship, security testing facilities, access to venture capitalist funding, industry connect as well as advisories in legal, Human Resource (HR), IPR and Patent matters.
Speaking at the virtual event, Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad urged the young, talented innovators of India to come forward and avail benefits of the ‘Chunauti’ contest launched by the Government and create new software products and apps.