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| Youth need to focus on innovation & on creating new jobs: Professor Ashutosh Sharma, DST Secretary |
New Delhi (Lisbon Times):- Secretary Department
of Science and Technology, Professor Ashutosh Sharma underlined that the time
for innovation has come and the youth now need not limit themselves to finding
jobs, but also focus on creating hundred other jobs.
“There has never been
a better time to be in the innovation business. It is important to be in the area
of innovation and connect with the Nation’s aspirations and priorities,” he
said in his keynote address at the KPIT sparkle virtual grand finale.
He spoke about the
difference between invention and innovation and the connection between them.
“Invention is
something which takes resources and produces knowledge that has both direction
and relevance that can be leveraged for innovation. Essentially invention is
producing new concepts, new knowledge, and innovation start where invention
stops. It takes the new idea, concept, or prototype and converts it into new
socioeconomic opportunities. For innovation to succeed the idea has to be
converted into something that people can use,” he added.
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Addressing the audience present at the grand finale event he pointed out that the participants
of the KPIT challenge are now at a juncture or twilight zone at which they have
developed a successful idea or prototype. This is the first step towards
innovation consisting of a chain of events starting from scouting of people and
ideas, training, mentoring, encouraging, and beyond.
He said that the
participants should ‘know their problem’ which means they should have
knowledge about the market, competitors, need of the product, as well as market
realities.
“DST has increased the budget of startup and innovation by 500% in the last five years and that has
led to the creation of more technology incubators (TIB) and supported more startups
in the last five years than in the previous 50 years. DST is on a journey of
doubling startups in every three to five years with thrust from other
ministries like, MEITY, DBT and Atal innovation mission of NITI Ayog” he
pointed out.
He stressed that there
are a lot of opportunities available at every step for starting innovation
journeys --- grant of Rs 10 lakhs for prototyping for a pre-incubation period,
seed money up to 1 crore Rupees per startup from DST. He added it has been
found that for every one rupee given by the government as grants to startups
boosts the confidence from investors to the tune of 11.5 rupees.
Professor Sharma
emphasized that the future is going to be nothing but disruptive and we must
build the capacity to learn, relearn and move forward with the understanding
and willingness to change.
KPIT Sparkle Virtual Grand Finale was a three-day virtual event organized recently by KPIT Sparkle which is a platform that connects budding technology entrepreneurs with the incubation ecosystem. It provides the multidisciplinary outlook required to first-time student entrepreneurs with an objective to spread the culture of innovation at a grassroots level and inculcate innovative thinking to identify and solve real-life use-cases/problems by developing a unique solution. It further provides opportunities for realizing indigenous solutions to the problems faced by our country within the areas of mobility and energy, encourage students to generate IP and facilitate them to secure their intellectual property, provide faculty of academic institutions a hands-on experience on problem-solving and strengthen the student - mentor bond, encourage students to become entrepreneurs and facilitate incubation across India.
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