Amitabh Kant, the CEO of Niti Aayog said today that the government has plans to identify 10 incubators from among the 200 such centres existing, and invest Rs 200 crore in helping them scale up their capacity.
Kant was speaking at Startup India’s conference, where he said, “There are 200 existing incubation centres. We will scale up 10 best incubation by ten times. We have received 120 applications for the same. We will select 10 and to each incubator, we will produce Rs 20 crore.”
He also revealed that the government will invest RS 20 lakh to support existing tinkering labs.
“We are going to set up 100 new incubation centres this year. We have received 3,000 applications for it,” Kant said.
Kant also excitedly stated that the government is soon planning to start a contest to find out a solution for the problems in India.
“Can we do a flyover, which takes 4-5 years, in 30 days and to my mind it is possible,” Kant said.
The challenge of this will include developing solution for farming to help a farmer decide which seed should be sown in a particular season depending on soil and weather condition to get maximum output, he added.
He further stated that the government will also look at finding solutions for growing national problems, like sewage problem and solving the water crisis, as part of this contest.
“Grand challenge will be launched shortly. There is a huge opportunity,” Kant said.
