Dear Fortess members,
We have initiated our association with Mr.R.Ramanan, Mission Director – Atal Innovation Mission and Additional Secy – Niti Aayog – Govt of India, in November 2018 starting with a presentation done to Fortess members. Fortess has been impressed by the presentation and AIM offers a lot of scope and opportunity for Fortess members to give back to society. For this purpose, we give below a brief note on AIM for information of all members.
Fortess members now have the following members who have agreed to be part of the team to be involved in the activities identified for Fortess members.
Ms.Padmaja Krishnan
Ms.Chanda Hate
Ms.Lata S. Prasad
Mr.Puyabreta Sen
Mr.V.Ravi
Mr. Shiva Subramaniam
Mr. Paramasivam Venkataramasamy
Prashanth Reddy
Prof. Dr. S.V. Mani
Fortess will continue to post on Fortess website the progress of this initiative, from time to time. We request all members to consider this initiative as an excellent opportunity for Fortess members to contiribute, be it mentoring, technology, entrepreneurship and start-ups. Let us contribute and give back to society in the best possible way that we can.
Thanking you,
The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is a mission under National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog which was formed in
2015 as the premiere ‘Thinktank’ of India under the leadership of the Prime Minister. AIM was launched to serve as a platform for the promotion of Innovation Hubs, Grand Challenges, startup businesses and other self-employment activities focussed on technology-driven areas.The AIM was stated to have two core functions:
Entrepreneurship promotion through the Self-Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) programme, wherein innovators would be supported and mentored to become successful entrepreneurs
Innovation promotion by providing a platform where innovative ideas are generated.
Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is a mission to create innovation in the mindset among students in school and university students through ATAL tinkering labs in various schools across India.
Under this mission ATL is allocated funds for maintenance of equipment, purchase of consumables, organising popular science lecture series,
innovation events, and other scientific activities, competitions, and payment of honorariums to the faculty and mentors involved.
The Atal Tinkering Lab Handbook together with capturing the experiences of the young innovators of the country with the Atal Tinkering Lab, provides a compendium of guidelines, resources, methodologies, key learning, case studies of the ATL ecosystem. Attached is the handbook (annexure 1) for ready reference.
Their second mission is to set up incubators at university levels to promote entrepreneurship. This mission includes volunteering, among others, for
– entrepreneurship development workshops
– training programmes for startup businesses
– mentoring wherein experienced mentors can assist in understanding and excel on the business ecosystem
– help in development of technologies used by the incubated start-up We can refer online for Guidelines for Scale-up support to Established
Incubation Centers under Atal Innovation Mission. Attached is guidelines handbook for ready reference.
Their third mission is to create new products through Atul India challenges. This mission which motivates womens’ empowerment has huge potential for volunteers to get engaged in various programmes organised for women to create innovative products and whole lot of awareness programmes for women, be it hygiene, working smart in various sectors to increase productivity and also to focus on quality products.
MINUTES OF CONCALL MEET WITH MR.R.RAMANAN HELD ON 3 RD APRIL 2019 ATTENDED BY RAMANAN, JAYANT PENDHARKAR, LATA PRASAD AND CHANDA HATE.
Mr.Ramanan referred to the broad objectives of of Atul Innovative Mission (ATL) 1. Innovation through Atal Tinkering Labs in schools, accelerate growth of incubation centres to promote entrepreneurship, promote innovations and assist in scaling up support of incubator centres.
Referring to the following activities which Atul Volunteers have expressed for volunteering,
Mr.Ramanan gave the following suggestions:-
List of Activities as communicated earlier–
1. Visit to Atul Tinkering Labs in schools to see how members can get associated with the innovation centres and the teacher training programmes – in this context we can get the list of schools with labs at Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore.
2. ATL student internship programme – how does this work
3. How to go about and conduct events
– Innovation award for promoting social and commercial innovations
– Partnering for Childrens’ award
4. Scope for assisting and scaling up support at Incubators set up in various educational institutions
5. How Fortess can promote innovation through
Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL)
Atal Incubation Centers (AIC)
6. How Fortess can contribute to Entrepreneurship programme through Self- Employment and Talent Utilization. Fortess can provide support to innovators and mentor them to become successful entrepreneurs
7. Support to existing programmes for self-employment for women
8. Support and promote growth start-up and business plan through
Mentoring
Prototyping facilities
Training
Partnerships & connections
Business strategy
Chanda emphasised on the need of a strong interface between Fortess and AIM and enquired if there were any ready toolkits available for each of the activities above.
Suggestions by Mr.Ramanan
1. To start off as an immediate area, since Padmaja is already involved with AIM in a Delhi school, Padmaja can share with the AIM Fortess group about the involvement with AIM in the school.
2. Identify a SPOC from Fortess for AIM to start with.
3. Those interested in mentoring, can log on to the mentoring portal of AIM which has self tutorials, interaction sessions, guidelines and process handbook.
4. Fortess members can go through the following handbooks – Handbook for established Atul Tinkering Labs which is a compendium of guidelines, case studies etc. attached – Handbook for Guidelines for scaleup support for established incubator centres as attached
.5. In case Fortess was to adopt a particular Tinkering Lab, a Statement of Intent (SOI) can be formulated and interested members can have regular interactions.
6. Volunteering associated to Incubation centres and start-ups. Eg. Assist/advise in hiring management for start-ups. In this context, Mr.Ramanan suggested that interaction with start-ups needs to be very dynamic by members, specially because these start-ups are not process oriented and we need to accept ourselves during the course of interaction.
7. Create a facebook interface with Fortess and start posting pictures, discussions videos etc. and create more visibility and to take to the next level.
8. As of now , this initiative will involve pure volunteering and this will be in a reward in itself. Mr.Jayant Pendharkar suggested that the Fortess website needs to be taken to the next level and we need to create a collaborative platform by creating groups with Fortess to ensure that it is structured and the interaction is sustained.
Encl. 2 Handbooks pdf files.
