Context: Recently, Union Minister of Road transport & Highways and MSME recently launched Bank of Schemes, Ideas, Innovation and Research portal on MSMEs through Video Conference.
About the Portal

• The Portal gives access to all Schemes of Union, State and UT Governments.
• It has the provision for uploading Ideas, Innovations & Researches in the sector.
• The portal has unique features of not only crowdsourcing of Ideas, but also evaluation and rating the ideas by crowd sourcing
• It can also facilitate inflow of venture capital, foreign collaboration etc.
• Users who have any idea, innovation or Research with him/her can share it on this platform which will be reviewed by the concerned Officer and published for public view.
• Registered users can rate these ideas (Crowdsourcing) and venture capitalists can connect with users having ideas, innovation and research.

Significance of the Portal

• The portal will prove to be of great transformational significance to the MSMEs in particular and the economy in general.
• The category-wise classification and analysis of information and the achievement will help others learn/take lessons from successful experiences.
• The portal will be handled by quality professionals to keep it updated on a sustained basis.
• The portal will help the MSMEs in a big way through information sharing and will help in the research activities like those in rural tribal knowledge, skills will get a chance for spreading their knowledge.
• It can assist the farmers in planning, production, storage and marketing of their produce.
• The portal will benefit the potential entrepreneurs as one stop compendium of Ideas, innovation and research ready for commercialization.
• The Rating of Ideas can be seen publicly which will help in decision making.