•  NIDHI (National Initiative for Development and Harnessing Innovations), an umbrella program is pioneered by the Department of Science & Technology(DST), Government of India, for nurturing ideas and innovations (knowledge-based and technology-driven) into successful startups.
• In order to realize ambitious Startup India, DST aims to bring both speed and scale to transform the Startup Ecosystem in the country and has committed 500 crores to implement these new programs in next few years.
• This programme would work in line with the national priorities and goals and its focus would be to build an innovation driven entrepreneurial ecosystem with an objective of socio-economic development through wealth and job creation.
• NIDHI would aim to nurture start-ups through scouting, supporting and scaling of innovations.
• The key stakeholders of NIDHI would include various departments and ministries of the central government, state governments, academic and R & D institutions, mentors, financial institutions, angel investors, venture capitalists and private sectors.
• NIDHI is developed keeping in line the new national aspirations and on the basis of DST’s experience of three decades, in promoting innovative start-ups.
• There are 8 components of NIDHI that support each stage of a budding startup from idea to market. The first component PRAYAS (Promoting and Accelerating Young and Aspiring Innovators & Startups), launched on 2nd September, 2016, aims to support innovators to build prototypes of their ideas by providing a grant up to Rs.10 lakhs and an access to Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab). The final component is the Seed Support System which provides up to One Crore rupees per start-up and is implemented through Technology Business Incubators. During the current financial year with a view to drive the innovation and startup centric new initiatives in a scaled up manner for its wider outreach across the country, a 450% increase in allocation (Rs. 180 crores) has been made in the Department’s budget

Analysis:

• The Indian startup ecosystem has seen a lot of activity in terms of growth of number of startups that emerged and also in terms of deals for funding that got closed and amount that were funded. In the first quarter of 2015, Indian startups raised $1.7 billion from investors.
• On an average, at least two startup funding per day between January and February 2015 happened.
• In the year 2015 in Q1, startups in India had raised close to $450 million, a 300% growth in the amount raised. There were 300 deals in the entire year in 2014 – half of that many deals were made in Q1-2015. 147 deals between January to March 2015, declared investments totaled at $ 1.7 billion. In the similar time frame, the UK startup scene saw $ 682 million investment and the U.S. startups have raised about $9.7 billion in Q1 2015.
• All this data shows a robust ecosystem of Startup culture that is coming up with technology driven payments and consumer web sectors having cornered more than half of the entire funding amount; mobile, eCommerce and SaaS (Software and Services) companies and others accounted for the other half. Investor money seems to be chasing established e-commerce players but newer e-commerce entrants aren’t getting funded as much.
• Against this bright background, however, the challenge that the young student innovators face is to raise the initial funding for his startup. This fund will be helpful to all the young innovator.