New Delhi, July 26 (KNN) GIZ jointly with Zinnov, Citrix, Ericsson, Harman International and technology business incubator, IKP EDEN, launched SIGMA, a social accelerator programme, on July 18, 2017 in Bangalore.

The programme was launched in the presence of industry leaders, sustainable development think tanks, impact investors and social start-ups.

Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary to Government, IT, BT & Science & Technology Department, Bengaluru, during the inauguration highlighted the importance of social enterprises to tackle some of the pressing challenges India is facing. He also outlined some of the initiatives undertaken by the government of Karnataka to work with start-ups.

SIGMA, which stands for Social Innovation, Grow, Multiply and Accelerate, aims to create an ecosystem to nurture social impact start-ups in India who are developing leading edge solutions in the areas of education, clean tech, healthcare, smart agriculture and sanitation.

The four-month programme will offer social start-ups with mentorship in business, technical, functional and domain specific areas. Start-ups will also get access to customers, partners, co-working space, tools and platforms, technology support, and business advisory services.

The programme was launched under the framework of the Strategic Alliance, a Public Private Partnership between GIZ, Bosch, Intellecap and Reckitt Benckiser, which aims at fostering corporate engagement in start-up incubation.

Social for-profit start-ups working in the area of education, clean tech, healthcare, smart agriculture and sanitation can apply till the 4th August 2017. The programme will start on the 26th August 2017. The selected start-ups will each receive a stipend of INR 15,000, and on graduation, the top three start-ups will receive seed grants.

Start-ups that would like to participate in the accelerator programme can apply under the following link: http://zinnov.com/sigma-accelerator

https://www.f6s.com/sigmasocialstartupaccelerator (KNN Bureau)