According to a press
statement released by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, the
Startup India Yatra (Journey) van, starting from the capital of Bhopal, will travel
to 10 cities of Madhya Pradesh to spread awareness about the Startup India
initiative and Madhya Pradesh Start-up Policy.
The Startup India Yatra van is a part of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s Startup India initiative that was launched in August 2015 with the objective
to provide a platform to start-up enterprises to be recognised and funded; to
make India a country of job creators. The Startup India Yatra van is designed to identify grass root level entrepreneurs in
the smaller towns of India and create a platform for budding entrepreneurs to
have the opportunity to live out their start-up dreams.
The experts on board the
vehicle will listen to entrepreneurial talents pitch their ideas, select
entrepreneurs for incubation and eventually transform their ideas into an
enterprise.
To promote job creation
in Tier II and Tier III towns and cities (cities with a population of 50,000 to 100,000 are classified as Tier II cities and
those with a population of 20,000 to 50,000 are Tier III cities), the Startup
India initiative organises the Startup India Yatra in one state every month. The Yatra conducts boot camps where students
are given lessons in business planning followed by a pitch fest where they can
present their ideas; business ideas that are shortlisted get incubated in
state-run incubators.
The Yatra van is set to begin on 16 July 2018 and will cover 10
districts, 15 institutions and nearly 25 colleges over a span of 30 days.
The programme’s technology
partner Shrofile, which is a video-based
personality evaluation platform, records 30-second videos of participants
introducing themselves and their ideas on the Startup India App screens; these
videos are then sent to the Startup India team for evaluation and selection.
The press release noted
that so far, the Yatra van has
travelled to the states of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Uttarakhand.
In Gujarat, the vehicle
travelled to the cities of Anand, Vasad, Mehsana, Jetalpur, and Ahmedabad in
July and August 2017, where around 300 start-ups pitched their ideas and 22
incubation offers were made by the Indian Institute of Management
Ahmedabad and the Mudra
Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA).
The Yatra van covered the seven cities in Uttar Pradesh-Agra, Bareilly,
Kanpur, Lucknow, Sultanpur, Varanasi, and Noida-in November and December 2017. Over
5,000 people participated and around 350 start-ups pitched their ideas, out of
which 44 start-ups were selected for incubation. The selected start-ups received
incubation offers from the Indian Institute of Technology
(BHU), the Indian Institute
of Technology Kanpur, iB Hubs, Birla Institute of Management
Technology and Indian
Institute of Management Lucknow.
In January and February
2018, boot camps were conducted in 16 districts in Odisha that impacted over
10,000 entrepreneurs. 3,600 start-ups pitched their ideas, of which 76 received
incubation offers.
In April 2018, 3,500
students from 12 districts in Uttarakhand participated in the programme and were
provided with training on how to build business models.
According to the press
release, the Startup India initiative intends to build a secure and diverse
start-up ecosystem in the country to encourage innovation and create
opportunities for up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
The Startup India initiative
works with several Ministries of the Government of India and corporates to
promote incubation and accelerator programs that lead to the creation of more
start-ups.
The program has been
able to gather around 10,999 start-up registrations and
has generated employment for about 109,869 people.
