In News: In a major initiative to encourage and enable holistic progress in the incubator ecosystem across the country, NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), has launched AIM iCREST – an Incubator Capabilities enhancement program for a Robust Ecosystem focused on creating high performing Startups.
Aim
- iCREST Program at going beyond incubator capacity building.
Partners
- AIM has joined hands with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wadhwani Foundation – organizations that can lend credible support and expertise in the entrepreneurship and innovation space.
About AIM-iCREST
- AIM iCREST, as the name suggests, has been designed to enable the incubation ecosystem and act as a growth hack for AIM’s Atal and Established incubators across the country.
- This is a first of its kind initiative for advancing innovation at scale in India.
- Under the initiative, the AIM’s incubators are set to be upscaled and provided requisite support to foster the incubation enterprise economy, that will help them to significantly enhance their performance.
- This will be complemented by providing training to entrepreneurs, through technology driven processes and platforms.
- Given the current pandemic crisis, the effort will focus on supporting start-up entrepreneurs in knowledge creation and dissemination as well as in developing robust and active networks.
Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)
- Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is the Government of India’s flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.
- Atal Innovation Mission initiative is set up by the NITI Aayog to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
- AIM’s objective is to develop new programmes and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of the economy, provide platform and collaboration opportunities for different stakeholders, create awareness and create an umbrella structure to oversee the innovation ecosystem of the country.
Six major initiatives of AIM:
- Atal Tinkering Labs-Creating problem-solving mindset across schools in India.
- Atal Incubation Centers-Fostering world class start-ups and adding a new dimension to the incubator model.
- Atal New India Challenges-Fostering product innovations and aligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministries.
- Mentor India Campaign- A National Mentor network in collaboration with the public sector, corporates and institutions, to support all the initiatives of the mission.
- Atal Community Innovation Center– To stimulate community centric innovation and ideas in the unserved /underserved regions of the country including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
- ARISE-To stimulate innovation and research in the MSME industry.
Source: PIB
