A meeting took place between R Ramanan (Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission) and Fortess members on 17th November, 2018 at TCS office in Air India Building.
The following Fortess members were present in Air India Building:
JVP
Suresh Kumar
Anita Rajan
Lata Prasad
Keyur Dhaky
P S Viswanathan
Pankaj Baliga
B Gopal
Ranjana Maitra
Suresh Haridas
Ganesh Kulkarni
R Hariharan
S Hariharan
Two invitees
Deepak Jadav
Ranjeet Pawar
Following Chennai members were connected:
S Mahalingam
G Ramsubramanian (Subbu)
Paramasvam V (Param)
Hema Hari
Ganapathy Sankarabaaham
Following Bangalore members were connected:
S Balasubramanian (Bala)
S Murali
Kumar Swami Rao
The meeting started with a brief welcome to Ramanan from Jayant Pendharkar and requested him to present the activitis of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and broadly outline his expectations from FORTESS. This is a major initiative of the Government of India to create an eco system in India promote innovation and entrepreneurship, staring from schools. Ramanan, a veteran of TCS and CMC, has been deputed by the Tata Group to Niti Aayog of the Government of India to provide leadership in this area.
The aims and objectives of AIM may be seen from their website so this account will not cover those details.
Ramanan gave an excellent presenation on AIM and went into detailed the two objectives namely:
Innovation promotion through
Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL)
Atal Incubation Centers (AIC)
Scale-up support to Established Incubators
Entrepreneurship program through Self-Employment and Talent Utilization, wherein innovators would be supported and mentored to become successful entrepreneurs
He stressed that with rapid evolution of low cost technolgy it was possible to make a positive impact on all segments of Indian society – including rural India. Some of the areas of interest were affordable 3 d printing techlogy to prmote prototyping; convergence of big data and Artificial Intelligence. Block chain methodology to regulate the explosive volume of internet based transactions. Bio technology engineering could have a huge positive impact on India with 65% of population under 35 years of age, and 150 million younsters about to enter the workplace. So there was an opportunity to enjoy the demorapfic dividend. And if not taken advantage of the it could quickly degenrate into a demographic nightmare. With that in mind the leaders at NITI sought to craete an INNOVATION & ENTRENEURSHIP Ecosystem- and out of that thinking was born AIM about two years back.
The main objectives were:
1) Create an umbrella Structure
2) Create a collaborative platform
3) Inculcate best practices
4) Provide policy inputs to NITI
5) Creat awareness
6) Develop new programs
It was observed that R&D expediture per capita in India is very low and out that 70% came from the government sector. AIM propsed to reverse this situation by its various programs.
Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) were concieved and set up at school level. The idea being that it should be outside of the school curriculum and inculate the notion that tinkering with science and technology should be fun and therby release creative juices in children. Out of 20,000 applications from schools some 500 have been approved and a network of about 5,000 schools benefit and about 8,000 teachers are trained to mentor the children.
Typically problems they address are in field of anti theft devices, light sensors, irrigation, drinking water, health care, traffic problems. So they are challanged to address evry day problems using low cost technolgy.
Various promotional activities have been undertaken including collaboration with Russia (Siri initiative), UNICEF etc.
In area of incubation grants are avialabe to educational institues (up to Rs 10 crores). About 100 incubators have been set up and about 500 start ups created.
Typically incubators will be set up in colleges (about 70% in universities and balance in industry). An SPV to be created with a dedicated CEO to foster in culture of world class incubators. Collaboration with defence is also being explored. There is AIM ARISE (Applied Research for Small Business) and OS SRIR (Small business Innovation and Reseach) and are some of the special purpose vehicles planned to foster incubation eco system. There is scope for mentorship wher about 2 to 3 hours per week is expected . Object being to create “Job Creator” and not “Job Seeker” environment.
After this excellent overview there quite a few interactions from all.
This meeting brought out that we can mutually benefit by getting involved with AIM activities. We need to discuss internally as to how to take this forward, perhaps some special interest groups can be created on the FORTESS collaborative platform.
An important observation by Ramanan was that MNC were more involved with AIM as against Indian corporates. How can we help in that regard given our reach?
Some Fortess members are working with schools, how can we leverage those connections?
An action plan was summarised and is produced below:
Individuals gets associated with AIC ATL etc
Disseminate best practices in operations eg in mentoring, skill development, community connect and networking platforms etc
Agreement signed should be open ended – mention need to explore areas of collaboration as these wil keep emerging
Fortess members are associated with PanIIT and thru them can access to labs in IIT
Members can share challenges that need to be addressed
Papers published can be discussed and done in association with Niti Ayog
Fortess can adopt ATL/AIC in specific regions for interacting and supporting with expertise
Galvanise private industry to work with AIM in creating platforms for awareness
Fortess to provide a list of people and their expertise
Sponsor a testing lab, provide testing environment
Plan visit to ATL
Support advocacy of AIM through their own platform/networks to build awareness
Sign SOI (Satement of Interest) with Niti Ayog
