CSIR assures help to innovators

National Innovation Foundation seeks marketing ties with corporates

Ahmedabad based National Innovation Foundation (NIF) has signed a pact with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to support innovators. The Council has also announced ten scholarships for NIF innovators.

The NIF is an autonomous body supported by the department of Science and Technology.

"With this MoU, CSIR will support innovators at NIF. We have also announced 10 scholarships for the innovators at the foundation. We are in talks with corporates to enhance the number of scholarships at NIF," R A Mashelkar, director general, CSIR, and secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India, said today.

Meanwhile, the NIF is also planning link-ups with the corporate sector for marketing products developed by innovators at the foundation. Corporates like Calvin Klein, Cromption Greaves have showed interest these products. Pantaloon has agreed to display these products at its stores.

NIF is also planning to tie up with institutes of excellence such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institute of Design (NID) to provide innovative design and technology to NIF products.

So far, the foundation has filed over 62 patents and six with US authorities for its products. It has received an approval for cotton stripper, developed by a farmer Mansukh Patel.

"This year we have doubled NIF's corpus to over Rs 40 crore. This will enable the innovators to work on their ideas better," said Mashelkar.

President A P J Abdul Kalam today awarded the innovators at NIF at third National Innovations Awards for Grassroots Innovations and Traditional Knowledge Practices.

86 awardees were selected through a rigorous and multi-stage screening and validation process from a total of 21,931 innovations and traditional knowledge practices.

Among the awardees, three were declared as national award winners namely Ashok Dhiman from Haryana for an innovative tea making machine, U S Patil from Maharashtra for developing match sticks from a natural fibre and Yusuf Khan from Rajasthan for ground nut digger. Five innovators were declared as awardees in the state award category.

The rest of the innovators, out of the 86 awardees, were given awards under several other categories like posthumous awards, special recognition under traditional craft community, utility category, energy, farm machinery, agri-processing, general machinery, transport, agro-forestry technology and social impact, student category, plant variety, consolation, ideas, agriculture, collaborative research between grassroots innovator and scientists and livestock categories amongst others.

Nine innovators from Gujarat received consolation prizes for developing various mechanical and engineering innovations. Notable amongst these were an indigenously developed buttonhole making machine, a novel fabrication for air blowers for use in air curtains and air conditioners, a bicycle mounted and operated agricultural sprayer and a one of its kind all aluminum mini diesel engine.

In Gujarat, the Gujarat Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN) provides incubation support to the NIF awarded innovations and some other high potential innovations from the Honey Bee database. Two other GIANs, set up by NIF are functioning from Jaipur and North East.