Government to Launch Portal to Support Innovators: Telecom Minister

To provide support to innovators in various fields, a separate portal under Department of Electronics and IT (Deity) will be established, where people can put up their innovative products to get government help.

"Under my Department of IT, a separate portal shall be created which is dedicated to the innovators of India. Anyone who innovates can put his innovation on that portal and my department will follow it. We will reach them in the event they are worthy of that. They will be given all the support,"

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said during an Intel event on innovation in New Delhi.

The Minister said he will personally oversee the initiative to ensure that the innovators are getting all help.

Prasad said Indians by nature are frugal innovators and they should be supported.

The Minister said his government is promoting domestic electronics manufacturing in a big way and have received investment proposals worth Rs. 1.17 lakh crore till now, of which Rs. 90,000 crore have already been approved.

The Minister also facilitated 10 finalists of the 'Intel and DST Innovate for Digital India Challenge' who have developed innovative solutions for various fields like healthcare, agriculture among others.

The programme was launched in April this year by Intel in partnership with government, to attract innovators to develop easy-to-use solutions to drive technology adoption or create applications that accelerate delivery of e-governance services through MyGov app on mobile platforms.

"We believe that grassroots level innovation built through robust public private partnership like this will lead the way towards achieving a truly Digital India," Prasad said.

Speaking during the occasion, Intel Corporation Senior Vice-President and General Manager (Sales and Marketing group) R Pearson said Intel is one of the original investors in India and the company has so far invested $3 billion (Roughly Rs. 19,836 crores) and employs about 8,000 people.

The company also launched a programme titled 'Ek Kadam Unnati Ki Aur' wherein it will work with national and state governments to create a blueprint to drive technology enabled transformation at the grassroots level in 10 states.

The company said it aims to work closely with entities like common service centres (CSCs) and MyGov that provide last mile citizen services across the country.