In an effort to scale up and give a boost to the defence start-ups, a seminar on ‘iDEX: Innovation for Defence Excellence’ followed by a panel discussion was held at Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE.CO) at IIM Ahmedabad. CIIE.CO is the incubation hub at IIM-A, which is one of India’s leading centres catalysing the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country through its various interventions and initiative. The seminar was attended by the Chairman, iDEX, Dr V K Rai; Start-up mentor, Ravin Vyas; and Wing Cdr Puneet Chadha, Defence PRO (Gujarat). Speakers delivered a series of lectures to the students of the Armed Forces Programme (AFP).
Fostering innovation
Dr V K Rai emphasised the vital need for promoting indigenous capability in the defence sector and outlined the scope of the iDEX project initiated under the aegis of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM). He highlighted the establishment of Defence Innovation Fund (DIF) aimed to create an ecosystem to foster innovation and technology development in Defence by engaging the industry, MSMEs, start-ups, individual innovators, R&D institutions, and the academia.
Dr V K Rai spoke about provision of providing necessary assistance in terms of grants/funding and technical support to enable the development of technologies with the potential for adoption by Indian defence sector. He also spelt out the core objectives of the Defence Innovation Fund as facilitation of rapid development of new, indigenous, and innovative technologies and creation of a culture of engagement with innovative start-ups, to encourage co-innovation and co-creation for defence sector.
iDEX has invited interested IIM-A AFP students to join.