India’s efforts at Promoting Entrepreneurship and Innovations

India’s efforts at Promoting Entrepreneurship and Innovations

1. Startup India:

Through the Startup India initiative, Government of India promotes entrepreneurship by mentoring, nurturing and facilitating startups throughout their life cycle. Since its launch in January 2016, the initiative has successfully given a head start to numerous aspiring entrepreneurs. A ‘Fund of Funds’ has been created to help startups gain access to funding.

2. Make in India:

This scheme is designed to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub, the Make in India initiative was launched in September 2014. It came as a powerful call to India’s citizens and business leaders, and an invitation to potential partners and investors around the world to centralize information about opportunities in India’s manufacturing sector. This has in turn helped procure investments, foster innovation, develop skills, protect intellectual property and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure.

3. Atal Innovation Mission (AIM):

AIM is the Government of India’s endeavour to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, and it serves as a platform for promotion of world-class Innovation Hubs, Grand Challenges, start-up businesses and other self-employment activities, particularly in technology driven areas.

4. Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women (STEP):

STEP was launched by the Government of India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development to train women who have access to formal skill training facilities, especially in rural India. The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and NITI (National Institution for Transforming India formally it is called as planning commission) Aayog recently redrafted the Guidelines of the 30-year-old initiative to adapt to present-day needs. The programme imparts skills in several sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, food processing, handlooms, traditional crafts like embroidery, travel and tourism, hospitality, computer and IT services.

5. Jan Dhan-Aadhaar - Mobile (JAM):

JAM, for the first time, is a technological intervention that enables direct transfer of subsidies to intended beneficiaries and, therefore, eliminates all intermediaries and leakages in the system, which has a potential impact on the lives of millions of Indian citizens.

6. Digital India:

The Digital India initiative has been launched to modernize the Indian economy to make all government services available electronically. The initiative aims at transforming India into a digitally-empowered society and knowledge economy with universal access to goods and services.

7. Stand-Up India:

It was launched in 2015, Stand-Up India seeks to leverage institutional credit for the benefit of India’s underprivileged. It aims at enabling economic participation of, women entrepreneurs, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and share the benefit of Indian growth with the above mentioned categories. Towards this end, at least one women and one individual from the SC or ST communities is granted loans between Rs.10 lakshs to Rs.1 crore to set up greenfield enterprises in manufacturing, services or the trading sector.

8. Trade related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development (TREAD):

This schemes envisages to address the critical issues of access to credit among India’s underprivileged women, the TREAD programme enables credit availability to interested women through non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As such, women can receive support of registered NGOs in both accessing loan facilities and receiving counselling and training opportunities to kick-start proposed enterprises, in order to provide pathways for women to take up non-farm activities.

9. Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY):

A flagship initiative of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE). This is a Skill Certification initiative which aims to train youth in industry-relevant skills to enhance employment opportunities for livelihood creation and employability.

10. National Skill Development Mission:

This scheme was unveiled in July 2015. The mission aims at building synergies across the sectors in terms of skill training activities. With a vision to build a ‘Skilled India’ it is designed to expedite decision-making across the sectors to provide skills at scale, without compromising on quality or speed.

11. Science for Equity Empowerment and Development (SEED):

SEED aims to provide opportunities to motivated scientists and field level workers to undertake action-oriented, location specific projects for socio-economic gain, particularly in rural areas. SEED emphasizes equity in development, so that the benefits of technology accrue to a vast section of the population, particularly the disadvantaged.