Policy

National Innovation and Startup Policy 2019 for students & faculty

Introduction:

Entrepreneurship and Startup Policies play a vital role in the economic and social development of a nation. In fast-developing economics like India, these policies are critical and very important for innovators, entrepreneurs, and startups in overcoming barriers while trying to market their innovation and growth of startups from scratch to scale. Higher Educational Institutes in general and technical institutes in particular, play an imperative role in shaping the Startup movement for a country like India, where a large section of young talents is in their academics. Ministry of Education(MoE0 and apex regulatory bodies such as University Grant Commission (UGC) and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) together have designed a more inclusive version with detailed guidelines on the ‘National Innovation and Start-up Policy 2019 (NISP 2019) for students and faculty members’ for implementation and adoption in both technical and non-technical HEIs across the country. Hon’ble Minister of Human Resource Development has launched the ‘National Innovation and Start-up Policy 2019 for students and faculty’ on 11th September 2019 at AICTE, New Delhi. The Policy will be implemented by MoE’s Innovation Cell and in coordination with AICTE, UGC, state governments & UTs, and universities, policy will be taken to ground for quick adoption by HEIs. This journey began on 16th November 2016, when AICTE launched the first version of the policy in the hands of the then Hon’ble President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee aiming at 10,000 AICTE approved technical institutions spread in almost 600+ districts of the country and approximately 80 lakh technical students and 7 lakh faculty members in accordance with Government of India’s “Startup India” Action plan launched on 16th January 2016. The present policy is a way forward to the earlier version of AICTE’s Startup Policy being implemented by the AICTE Startup Policy Implementation Committee. The present policy highlights various important and practical aspects of promoting and supporting innovation, technology commercialization, and startup in academic setup. It delineates pre-incubation and incubation support systems on campus, incentives for faculty and students involved in innovation and startup, and suggests mechanisms in the areas of IP ownership, revenue sharing, equity sharing between institutes, and incubated start-ups.

Policy Objectives:

The NISP 2019 intends to guide HEIs to promote student-driven innovations & start-ups and to engage the students and faculty in innovation and start-up activities on the campus. The policy aims at enabling HEIs to build, streamline and strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem on campus and will be instrumental in leveraging the potential of science, student’s creative problem solving and entrepreneurial mindset, and promoting a strong intra and inter-institutional partnerships with ecosystem enablers and different stakeholders at regional, national and international level. The entrepreneurial ecosystem in HEIs will play a key role in identifying, mentoring, nurturing the innovative and entrepreneurial potential of students, faculty, and staff, and transforming them into start-up entrepreneurs by provided avenues of funding, investment opportunities, and networking support to make the innovation and venture successful.