New Delhi, July 18 (KNN) The Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India may soon take a decision on providing matching grant to successful start-up in a month or two, said a senior official from the department.

Addressing the Awards Ceremony - India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) 2.0, Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST, said that if a company partners with a startup, then the DST will also partner with it and extend a matching grant to help it scale up.

"If industry is partnering with a startup putting an x amount of money, depending on the plans and other things, then DST will also partner and probably would put a matching amount of money in that startup," he said, adding the challenge for startups is to scale up and transition into stable businesses.

The government is coming up with startup centres worth Rs 150 crore each to help the startups access the resources, especially hardware, he said. Three centres will be launched this year, followed by 3-4 centres per year, thus creating a total of 20 such centres, he added.

The India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) 2.0, a tripartite initiative of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Lockheed Martin and Tata Trusts today named the winners of the 2019 edition of the annual IIGP 2.0. The winners were chosen from over 2,400 applicants who presented innovations that aim to bring large scale social impact and industrial transformation in India.

16 start-ups from the annual Open Innovation Challenge and 20 university teams from the University Challenge each received grants of INR 25 Lakh and INR 10 Lakh respectively to enable the evolution and maturation of their technology solutions proposals.

Prof. Sharma further urged FICCI to scale up the IIGP by doubling the size of the programme, which awarded 20 University Challenge winners and 16 Open Innovation Challenge winners this year.

The innovations identified for award this year were evaluated by a panel of jurors which include IIGP 2.0 stakeholders and implementation partners as well as external experts from the innovation, science, technology and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Implementation partners include the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

The purpose of IIGP 2.0 is to encourage, identify, support and incubate the technology solutions devised by ingenious local start-ups and university teams that seek to solve complex challenges.

The grants seek to enable their prototyping the proposed technology solutions and begin the process of evaluating and applying these technologies and solutions for social, commercial and industrial benefit.