Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) launched next-generation startup Challenge contest “Chunauti” to encourage startups and software products with special focus on Tier-II towns. This contest is a part of Rs 95 crore programme, spanning over 3 years, will hunt for around 300 startups working in identified areas and to provide them seed funds of up to Rs 25 lakh and other support from government through the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI).

Key Points:

-The support to the selected startup will be in the form of incubation facilities, mentorship, security testing facilities, access to venture capitalist funding, industry connect as well as advisories in legal, Human Resource (HR), and patent matters. Startups will also be provided cloud credits from leading cloud service providers.

-Startups who are in the ideation stage can be selected under the pre-incubation programme will be mentored for up to 6months and each intern would be paid Rs 10,000 per month for this period.

Identified areas under contest:

The identified areas include edu-tech, agri-tech and fin-tech solutions for masses; supply chain, logistics and transportation management; infrastructure and transportation management; infrastructure and remote monitoring, medical healthcare, diagnostic, preventive and psychological care; jobs and skilling, and linguistic tools and technologies etc.

Foundation stone laid for Rs 9.17 cr NIELIT at Muzaffarpur in Bihar

The minister also laid the foundation stone of the digital training and skilling center of the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) at Muzaffarpur in Bihar which will be developed by the Ministry at a cost of Rs 9.17 crore.

• The government of Bihar has allocated one acre of land for this institution which will be equipped with the state of the art training facility with a digital laboratory.