By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI: The Results of the National Startup Awards 2020 were released by Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal here on Tuesday. The virtual felicitation ceremony was held in the august presence of Minister of State for Commerce & Industry Som Parkash.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has conceived the National Startup Awards to recognize and reward outstanding Startups and ecosystem enablers that are building innovative products or solutions and scalable enterprises, with high potential of employment generation or wealth creation, demonstrating measurable social impact. The measure of success is not only the financial gains for the investors, but also the contribution to social good.
The first edition of the Awards invited applications across 12 sectors, which were further sub-classified into a total of 35 categories. These 12 sectors are Agriculture, Education, Enterprise Technology, Energy, Finance, Food, Health, Industry 4.0, Space, Security, Tourism and Urban Services. Apart from these, startups are to be selected from those which create impact in rural areas, are women-led and founded in academic campuses.
A total of 1641 applications were received from startups spread across 23 States and 4 Union Territories. These applicants included 654 Women-led, 165 academic institution based and 331 startups working in rural areas.
All applicants were evaluated against six broad parameters namely Innovation, Scalability, Economic Impact, Social Impact, Environmental Impact, and Inclusiveness and Diversity. After three rounds of detailed evaluation, 199 startups were selected for presentation before the jury. 192 out of these made presentations before the 15 specialist jury panels, which comprised of domain experts from industry, investors and government.
The recognised entities will benefit from such recognition, not only in terms of being able to attract more business, financing, partnerships and talent, but also enable them to serve as role models for other entities, and to inspire them to be purposeful and responsible about their socio-economic impact.
31 applications were received from incubators and 10 applications were received from Accelerators. 9 incubators and 5 Accelerators were selected after three rounds of evaluation for presentation before Jury Panel. All of them gave presentations before the Jury.
The felicitation ceremony was accompanied by the release of an e-Report on National Startup Awards 2020 highlighting the journey of First National Startup Awards including details of winners.
The ‘Startup India Showcase’ and ‘Blockchain-based Certificate Verification System’ were also launched during the event.The ‘Startup India Showcase’, a part of the Startup India portal, is intended to be an online discovery platform for the most promising startups of the country. The startups showcased here shall be handpicked by experts and will span across different sectors like FinTech, EdTech, Social Impact among others. The showcase will help industry, investors and public authorities find and connect with startups for potential partnerships, investments and public procurement respectively. This showcase will help the ecosystem connect with them better while also serving as an inspiration.
The ‘Blockchain-based Certificate Verification System’ will enable instant verification and access to certificates of recognitions issued by DPIIT. This feature introduces an added layer of security to the startup certificates. It can be accessed by Government Departments, procurement entities, investors, and other third parties to verify status of recognized startups for accessing different opportunities.
Congratulating the winners, the Railways and Commerce & Industry Minister Goyal said that the awards will generate excitement and enthusiasm among the young entrepreneurs in taking their innovative ideas to the higher level. He said the awards are unique in terms of breadth and span and recognise new ideas, innovations and new ways of working. He said these are not only the recognition and celebration of the new Eco-system but will also encourage the startup fraternity to aim for the sky. He said some of them will become the future unicorns and success stories of India which the world will see and recognise. This will propel the startups to expand and serve new geographies and large number of people.
The Minister said that startups are going to play important role in many strategic sectors. He said that new technologies will help in the economic development and take the fruits of development and growth to the last man in the pyramid. Technology can help the people across the country to build up skills, achieve scales and improve quality. He called upon the startups to enlist themselves in the Government e-market place (GEM) so that they can offer their services to the Government Departments and large number of customers.
He said that it is nice to see that people in the country are now becoming job creators rather than job seekers. He said that State Governments are also facilitating and incentivising the entrepreneurs and this positive approach augurs well for their expansion and growth. He said the COVID-19 should not be seen as a challenge but as an opportunity and those who are coping up with this challenge and fight with focused approach with ideas, innovations and good execution, will reap the dividends.
Speaking on the occasion, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Som Parkash said that the Startup mission, started by the Hon’ble Prime Minister in 2016, has expanded to every nook and corner of the country. There is at least one startup in 586 districts of the country. The startups are generating employment. He said that the incentives and facilities provided by the Government are helping the budding entrepreneurs and bringing out talent and skills.
