Railways Organises Workshop to Help Innovative Startups

Southwest Railways Mysore division has organised a workshop, on Indian Railway Innovation Program (IRIP) for fostering the development of Indian start-ups. Representatives of two dozen start-ups, and small and medium business, have attended the workshop physically while over one and half dozen did through video conferencing.

This workshop was conducted as a part of Indian Railways newly launched innovation centric programme “Start-ups for Indian.” The motive of organising such workshops is to nurture the environment for the small business and start-ups. Launched on 13 June 2022, this programme is intended to help start-ups with a financial aid of upto INR 1.5 Cr. This aid would be on an equal sharing and will be given as milestone-wise payment.
Divisional Railway Manager, Rahul Agarwal, highlighted some other benefits other benefits of IRIP such as complete online processing, full percent transparency, assistance from railways for carrying out trials of prototypes, enhanced funding on the successful performance of prototypes, retention of developed Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) with the innovator, etc.

This initiative by Government of India through Indian Railway is taken to develop innovative, cost-effective, implementable, scalable, functional prototypes and innovative products for addressing the issues present in the Indian railways. It will not only encourage start-ups but will help railways to find the solution of congenitally present problems through innovative technological methods. The innovation fund will be granted directly to the Indian Railway Innovation Policy start-ups. The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) will remain with the innovator.

The innovation selection will be conducted on the Indian Railways Process through an open process on the Indian Railway Innovation Portal. This online portal will help innovators to upload their projects portal with supporting proof and documents.