Indian Railways, the national transporter, has taken an important initiative in the field of innovation through the participation of start-ups and other entities.
Ashwini Vaishnaw (Photo: Ashwini Vaishnaw twitter)
Indian Railways, the national transporter, has taken an important initiative in the field of innovation through the participation of start-ups and other entities.
Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw launched “StartUps for Railways” today at the Rail Bhavan in New Delhi.
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This policy will bring scale and efficiency in the field of operation, maintenance, and infrastructure creation through the participation of a very large and untapped startup ecosystem.
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Speaking at the event, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the prolonged discussions over the integration of technology into Indian Railways have taken a firm shape in form of this initiative launched today.
Expressing his happiness on the launch of this initiative, the minister said that through this platform start-ups will get a good opportunity to connect with Railways. Out of over 100 problem statements received from different divisions, field offices/zones of Railways, 11 problem statements like rail fracture, headway reduction, etc. have been taken up in Phase I of this program. These will be presented before the start-ups to find innovative solutions.
The Railways Minister requested the startups to use this opportunity and assured them of support from the Indian Railways in the form of a 50 percent capital grant, assured market, scale and ecosystem.
Salient features of the Indian Railway Innovation Policy are:-
–Grant up to Rs. 1.5 Crore to innovator on equal sharing basis with provision of milestone-wise payment;
–Complete process from floating of the problem statement to the development of the prototype is online with a defined timeline to make it transparent and objective;
–Trials of prototypes will be done on Railways. Enhanced funding will be provided to scale up deployment on the successful performance of prototypes;
–Selection of Innovator/s will be done by a transparent and fair system which will be dealt with through an online portal inaugurated today by the Minister of Railways;
–Developed Intellectual property rights (IPR) will remain with the innovator only;
–Assured developmental order to innovator; and
–Decentralisation of the complete product development process at the divisional level to avoid delays.
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