New Delhi, June 13 (FN Agency) Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday launched the Start-ups for Railways, for fast adoption of modern technologies and to find innovative ways for technology solutions. This policy will bring scale and efficiency in the field of operation, maintenance and infrastructure creation through participation of a very large and untapped startup ecosystem, said Vaishnaw, while expressing happiness on the launch of this initiative. He said through this platform, the start-ups will get a good opportunity to connect with Railways. “Out of over 100 problem statements received from different divisions, field offices/zones of Railways, 11 problem statements like rail fracture and headway reduction have been taken up for phase 1 of this programme. These will be presented before the start-ups to find innovative solutions,” he said.
The Minister requested the startups to use this opportunity and ensured them of support from Indian Railways in the form of 50 per cent capital grant, assured market, scale and ecosystem. To make the policy successful, the Railways will provide 50 per cent capital support to the individual startups for developing the product. If the product is found to be good then startups will be given an assured development order so that they can deploy the technology at scale. The Union Minister said this initiative was part of India startup movement, which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016. “Startups have become an integral part of our economic movement. All our sectors today benefit from the start-ups, so we are very happy the start-up ecosystem is joining the Indian Railways,” he added. He informed that under the policy, the startups join the Railways to give solutions to the problem like track factured, capacity building, safety and other issues. The Minister requested the start-ups to use this opportunity and ensured them of support from Indian Railways in the form of assured market, scale and ecosystem.
As per the new policy, a grant up to Rs 1.5 crore will be given to an innovator on an equal sharing basis with provision of milestone-wise payment. Trials of prototypes will be done in Railways. Enhanced funding will be provided to scale up deployment on successful performance of prototypes. Complete process from floating of problem statement to development of prototype is online with defined time line to make it transparent and objective. The selection of Innovators will also be done by a transparent and fair system, which will be dealt through online portal, inaugurated by the Union Minister.