India has been consistently rising in the global startup ecosystem in the last seven years and jumped to 46th rank in the Global Innovation Index.
New Delhi: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; and MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh has inaugurated an advanced 650 teraflops supercomputing facility at National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) at Mohali which will act as a facilitator for startups working in areas like telemedicine, digital health, mHealth with big data, AI, Blockchain and other technologies.
Established at the cost of Rs. 20 crores, it will cater to the needs of the interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research being carried out at the Institute related to agricultural and nutritional biotechnology and help analyse big data accruing from the large-scale genomics, functional genomics, structural genomics, and population studies being carried out at various Institutes and universities of national and international repute.
It will be available to NABI scientists and the Centre of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB). It will be open to collaborative work for the scientists/faculties working in the neighbouring institutes/universities and the projects sanctioned under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). It has been set up in collaboration with C-DAC, Pune.
Following the inauguration, Dr. Jitendra Singh launched two digital working platforms -NABI-Labify and e-Office at NABI & CIAB under the 'Digital India' Initiative. NABI Labify is a unique software that facilitates live tracking of funds, which are sanctioned for the purchase of equipment, consumables, manpower, and extramural projects.
The Minister announced that the Government would identify and promote 75 innovative Startups in the 75th year of India's independence, and the new super-computing facility will act as a facilitator for them.
In another event, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated i-RISE, a technology business incubator (TBI) at Mohali that proposes to provide world-class research facilities for startups in the country. With this, Mohali will join the league of other Startup hubs like Bengaluru and Gurugram. The Minister hoped that TBI would become successful and become a unicorn startup, adding to the ever-growing list of Unicorn startups from India.
Currently, India has 51 unicorn startups, the third-highest in the world, he added. Dr Jitendra Singh said that because of various schemes, focus, and support systems by Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, 10,000 startups got registered in India in 2021 alone. The country now has 50,000 plus startups providing more than 2 lakh jobs in the country.
He said that supported by the Department of Science and Technology and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, IISER Mohali, i-RISE Incubator, will work to transform and build deep impact across the startup ecosystem in the region through innovation, knowledge, and technology adoption.
He informed that India has been consistently rising in the global startup ecosystem in the last seven years and now has 500 plus incubator networks supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. He noted that in terms of the number of technology-based startups, the ranking of India was just next to the US, and India has jumped to 46th rank in the Global Innovation Index.
Courtesy: India Science Wire
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