Amitabh Kant felicitates 30 Start-Ups

New Delhi, June 4 (KNN) With a view to boost the Start-Up culture in the country, thirty innovation-led start-ups were felicitated yesterday under the 10^th year of the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme by Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer, NITI Aayog.

With the current government’s commitment towards building a young start-up nation, India is rightly poised to drive the next entrepreneurship wave. To ensure success, a conducive ecosystem is needed that not only nurtures creativity and innovation but also provides market opportunities to the new genre of entrepreneurs, said a official FICCI Press release.

The DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) is one such unique initiative that provides the much needed handholding and business development support to upcoming start-ups.

Resonating with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “start-up India” call, the program has been a pioneering initiative that has supported more than 400 innovators, start-ups with in-depth technology commercialization training and handholding support to commercialize and scale their ventures in India and across the world, particularly in the United States.

The programme has facilitated access to capital, industry partnerships and resources sought by the entrepreneurs. An impact assessment by Ernst and Young highlighted that the participating companies have generated economic wealth of over US$ 800 Million and have provided employment across different areas such as finance, strategy, operations and marketing.

A unique public private partnership initiated in 2007 between Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Indo-US S&T Forum; FICCI; Stanford Graduate School of Business; IC² Institute, University of Texas at Austin and TiE Silicon Valley. Each partner brings a distinctive value to the programme with a common objective of fostering innovation driven entrepreneurship in the country. (KNN Bureau)