Scientific processing of waste provides way for innovation: Hardeep Puri

Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Puri reiterated the commitment of the Centre to provide all support to the startups involved in finding solutions towards promoting cleanliness

Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Puri, on Monday reiterated the commitment of the Centre to provide all support and facilitation to the startups involved in finding solutions towards promoting cleanliness.

The minister said this while interacting with the startups shortlisted under the 'Swachhata Startup' challenge.

Drawing attention towards some of the major cleanliness challenges, the minister said that plastic waste management, mechanised solutions to sewer and septic tank cleaning, scientific processing of solid and liquid waste etc. provide huge opportunities to the startups for innovation and enterprise development.

The Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U), in collaboration with AFD (Agence Francaise de Developpement) and Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), had launched the Swachhata Startup Challenge on January 27 to promote an enabling environment for development startups and entrepreneurs in the waste management sector.

The Swachhata Startup Challenge sought innovative solutions from startups in the waste management domain under four thematic areas -- social inclusion, zero dump (solid waste management), plastic waste management and transparency.

The challenge aimed to award 10 winning solutions from startups with a financial support of Rs 25 lakh per selected project and a one-year incubation support.

Apart from this, eligible startups will also get additional incentives which include up to Rs 50 lakh of follow-on investment from Villgro (implementation partner for the challenge), and up to $100,000 worth credit and technology support from technology partner Amazon Web Services.

As part of the challenge, applications were invited against which a total of 244 solutions were received. Thereafter, screening of applications was done and 30 solutions were shortlisted for the next round of evaluation by a jury consisting of academicians, industry representatives etc. The top 10 applications among these will be named winners of the challenge.

The award ceremony to felicitate winners will be held on Tuesday at the Ambedkar International Centre in Delhi.

--IANS

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