Ahmedabad: Education Minister Jitu Vaghani said during the inauguration of ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav –Incentivizing Innovations and Empowering Startups: Towards Building of Atmanirbhar Bharat’ at Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat (KCG) said that there are 55,000 start-ups in India and around 10,900 are from Gujarat and of these, 3,566 are registered ones.
The Education Minister also announced a website dedicated to start-ups and launched ‘Innovation Club’ at 483 higher education institutes in collaboration with Gujarat Council of Science and Technology (GUJCOST).
“Among 3,566, 150 start-ups have already made substantial progress. Gujarat provides handholding and required support to other states too,” Vaghani stated while assuring that if required, the disbursements under the Gujarat government’s Student Startup and Innovation Policy (SSIP) will be increased.
Under the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav initiative, SSIP has shortlisted 75 universities, institutes and incubators to host programmes.
These shortlisted organisations have conducted various events such as design thinking workshops, events related to investments and pitching, start-up and innovation exhibition, industry start-up interaction, women start-up endeavours, IP related events and hackathons till September 26.
Awards were distributed to 18 teams participating in the ‘Smart Gujarat for New India Hackathon’, SSIP grants worth Rs 86.45 lakh were disbursed to 10 institutes, and grants were distributed to 26 teams under ‘Mind to Market Initiative’.
Also, an MoU was signed between Gujarat Venture Finance Limited (GVFL), Saurashtra Chambers of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA), Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad with i-Hub.
