Intel, govt set up accelerator plan

Intel and the department of science and technology on Wednesday announced a partnership to develop solutions for driving technology adoption in India. They called for entries to Innovate for Digital India challenge. The programme will give access to at least 20 teams a grant of Rs 2 lakh per team.

Intel has also roped in IIM Ahmedabad's centre for innovation incubation and entrepreneurship (CIIE) as the execution partner. Intel, CIIE and MyGov will work together for application management, program facilitation and popularisation.

As part of the competition, entrepreneurs, start-ups, academicians etc will get access to a three-month accelerator programme in Bangaluru and Pune. The accelerator programme will shortlist 20 ideas at Bangaluru. These shortlisted will given 12 weeks of mentorship in Begaluru and Pune to develop minimum viable products.

In the third phase, top 10 teams will be identified and will get access to grants up to Rs 5 lakh per team. Top 10 team will get to show their products to key market players and the three finalist will get chance to work with industry players for productisation. In Pune both CIIE and College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) will give support to teams in terms of infrastructure support.

"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," said Sachin Kelkar, head developer and partner programs, APAC, Intel.

Kelkar explained that 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.

Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO, MyGov, said, "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."