Rs 700 cr corpus available to fund startups, no limit to fund innovation

State-owned research and development organisation C-DOT has a corpus of over Rs 700 crore for funding startups, but the government has kept no limit to fund innovation, a top official of the entity said on Thursday.

Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of Regional Innovation Forum, C-DOT chief executive officer and chairman C-DOT Project Board RajKumar Upadhyay said that a number of delegations of ministers from neighbouring countries at the forum have expressed interest in technological collaboration with India, which will help in expansion of indigenous innovation beyond the country's boundary.

"We have various schemes of government to fund innovation. Some of these schemes are available through C-DoT. Through them we have a corpus of Rs 700 crore to fund startups, but there is no limit of fund if we find right innovation," Upadhyay said.

The delegation of communications ministers from Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal , Iran, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh visited the C-DoT campus.

The campus now also houses the Area Office and Innovation Centre of the International Tele-communication Union (ITU), which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.

"We have set up our innovation centre next to ITU office. This will provide startups with all the infrastructure required for operation as well as provide access to test bed for 5G. We will take the technologies developed by startups to other part of the world under the umbrella of ITU," Upadhyay said.