AIM-iLEAP

Context:

In a move to give a major push to tech startups across the country, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog Wednesday concluded its first fintech cohort of AIM-iLEAP- an initiative to back tech start-ups with much-needed access to industry, markets and investors.

Key Highlights:

• It is four-day bootcamp for “FinTech” start-ups (the chosen few from among the several AIM supported Fintech start-ups) from 14th to 17th June, 2021.
• The fintech cohort was done through a series of thematic virtual demo days organised AIM in partnership with Startup Réseau and Visa as part of AIM-iLEAP (Innovative leadership for entrepreneurial agility and profitability) initiative.
• The Fin-Tech cohort consisted of start-ups from a wide range of areas such as- payments, international money transfers, personal finance, consumer banking, insurance, neo bank etc. In the bootcamp they got an opportunity to fine-tune their pitches, work on their GTM strategy, understand more about the fintech ecosystem, ask questions to sectoral experts and so on.
• The aim of this initiative is to gives a structured yet lite-weight approach to bring together the start-ups, enterprises, investors and financers to come together and create partnerships that would help these start-ups to take a leap forward in achieving more scalable and sustainable solutions
  •  This will help to build trust and confidence among all the stakeholders which are the vital ingredients of a vibrant start-up and innovation ecosystem. Fintech community is at the forefront of building an ecosystem where everyone wins; such platforms catalyze movement towards reaching such a goal. It is AIM’s main objective to culminate into reality the vision of an Indian innovation ecosystem that runs sustainably on an auto-pilot mode.

About AIM- iLEAP Program

NITI Aayog’s flagship program – Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) has been at the forefront of promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. AIM has partnered with Startup Réseau – a leading startup accelerator operator, to support its various initiatives, programs and beneficiaries through a structured program that will provide AIM backed startups with the much needed access to industry, markets and investors.

Program hosting a series of Enterprise Demo Days and Investor Demo Days for AIM incubated startups. After 45 days, will announce demo day in a new sector.

Program Stages

• Selection of the startups will be determined on basis of investible stage
• Bootcamp Stage: Hosting a 1-week virtual bootcamp with the pool of applicants, to ensure an alignment on success criteria and solution
• Final Demo Day

Program Benefits

• Establishing industry credibility
• Access to enterprise assets of infrastructure, data, partner networks and customers
• Potential opportunity to earn a POC with participating corporates
• Attracting investment from attending investors
• Business Insights during the 4-day bootcamp preceding the demo day
• Access to extended network of mentors from Startup Reseau’s global network

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is Government of India’s flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. AIM’s objective is to develop new programmes and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of the economy, provide platform and collaboration opportunities for different stakeholders, create awareness and create an umbrella structure to oversee innovation ecosystem of the country.

Major initiatives taken in first year of establishment:

1. Atal Tinkering Labs-Creating problem solving mindset across schools in India.
2. Atal Incubation Centers-Fostering world class startups and adding a new dimension to the incubator model.
3. Atal New India Challenges-Fostering product innovations and aligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministeries.
4. Mentor India Campaign- A national Mentor network in collaboration with public sector, corporates and institutions, to support all the intiatives of the mission.
5. Atal Community Innovation Center- To stimulate community centric innovation and ideas in the unserved /underserved regions of the country including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
6. ARISE-To stimulate innovation and research in the MSME industry.

Atal Tinkering Labs:

Background

With a vision to ‘Cultivate one Million children in India as Neoteric Innovators’, Atal Innovation Mission is establishing Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs) in schools across India. The objective of this scheme is to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination in young minds; and inculcate skills such as design mindset, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing etc.

Key Features of ATL

ATL is a work space where young minds can give shape to their ideas through hands on do-it-yourself mode; and learn innovation skills. Young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). ATL would contain educational and learning ‘do it yourself’ kits and equipment on – science, electronics, robotics, open source microcontroller boards, sensors and 3D printers and computers. Other desirable facilities include meeting rooms and video conferencing facility.

In order to foster inventiveness among students, ATL can conduct different activities ranging from regional and national level competitions, exhibitions, workshops on problem solving, designing and fabrication of products, lecture series etc. at periodic intervals.

Financial Support

AIM will provide grant-in-aid of Rs. 20 Lakh to each school that includes a one-time establishment cost of Rs. 10 lakh and operational expenses of Rs. 10 lakh for a maximum period of 5 years to each ATL.

Eligibility

Schools (minimum Grade VI – X) managed by Government, local body or private trusts/society to set up ATL.

Source: PIB