Tata Trusts joins hands with Lockheed Martin, DST for IIGP

Tata Trusts has joined hands with Lockheed Martin and Department of Science and Technology (DST) for the second edition of India Innovation Growth Programme which focuses on providing support to startups in the country.
The partners intend to invest USD 2 million annually through the India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) 2.0, including provisions for seed money, for the entrepreneurs to develop technology-based solutions for the betterment of the society.
The first edition of the programme that began in 2007 and ran for a decade provided support of around USD 1 million per year to a total of around 500 startups.

"Encouraged by the success of taking 500 innovations to market and helping them capture local and global market value of around 6,000 crore, we now in new version hope to achieve an even better success not only in financial numbers but also improve lives of people," DST Programme Head of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Tech Commercialisation Harkesh Mittal told reporters here.
The new version of the programme would be bigger and better with inclusion of seed funding for the startups, he added.
The revamped programme will be rolled out tomorrow by Tata Trusts Chairman Ratan N Tata, DST Secretary Ashutosh Sharma and Lockheed Martin's George Standridge at the Festival of Innovation at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The IIGP 2.0 will invest in social and industrial innovations, train innovators in commercialisation strategies, offer support for incubation and assist in business development, ultimately taking ideas and Indian technologies to the global marketplace.

"Under IIGP 2.0 we will search for innovators who are on a mission to fight poverty and underdevelopment. Through our incubation programmes, selected innovators will be able to access the resources they need to create high quality, commercially viable and affordable solutions for social impact," Tata Trusts Head Innovations Manoj Kumar said.
Lockheed Martin started the programme in 2007 and DST joined it in 2009. IIGP 2.0 would run for three years between 2017 and 2019 which could even be expanded later.

Other partners of the programme includes Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT), IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Bombay. It also includes a several new components including the University Challenge.
Innovators from across the country with breakthrough ideas and demonstrable proof of concepts having either social or industrial impact would be able to participate in the programme.