In news– The Minister of Commerce and Industry recently launched the NavIC Grand Challenge during the 4th meeting of National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC) in New Delhi.
About National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC)-
- Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce had constituted the NSAC to advise the Government on measures needed to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities.
- It is a one of its kind congregation wherein the policy making process is driven as part of collaboration between all the key stakeholders of the Startup ecosystem.
- It is headed by the Minister of Commerce and Industry.
- The ex-officio members of the NSAC are nominees of the concerned Ministries/Departments/Organisations, not below the rank of Joint Secretary to the Government of India, will be ex-officio members of the Council.
- Joint Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade will be the Convener of the Council.
- The council has non-official members, representing various stakeholders such as:
- Founders of successful startups.
- Veterans who have grown and scaled companies in India.
- Persons capable of representing the interests of investors.
- Incubators and accelerators into startups.
- Representatives of associations of stakeholders of startups and representatives of industry associations.
- The term of the non-official members of the Startup Advisory Council will be for a period of two years.
- It suggests measures to facilitate public organizations to assimilate innovation with a view to improving public service delivery, promote creation, protection, and commercialization of intellectual property rights.
- It mobilizes global capital for investments in Indian startups, keeps control of startups with original promoters and provides access to global markets for Indian startups.
NavIC Grand Challenge-
- It aims at promoting adoption of NavIC as a geo-positioning solution.
- It also aims to identify and handhold solutions of startups which are engaged in developing NavIC enabled drones.
About NavIC-
- NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) is an autonomous regional satellite navigation system established and maintained by ISRO.
- NavlC is an indigenous positioning system that is under Indian control. There is no risk of the service being withdrawn or denied in a given situation.
- It covers India and a region extending up to 1 ,500 km beyond Indian mainland (primary coverage area).
- It provides position accuracy better than 20 m (20) and timing accuracy better than 50 ns (20).
- NavIC based applications are being used in various civilian sectors, including, transport, map applications, and timekeeping.
- Today major mobile chipset manufacturers like Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom already support NavIC across various chipset platforms.
- A few mobile phone OEMs have also released handsets which can be enabled to receive NavlC through Over the Air firmware .
- Some examples for NavlC enabled mobile phones include the Redmi Note 9 series from Xiaomi, the Realme 6 series, the OnePlus Nord, etc.
Source: PIB
