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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Rs 100cr to innovate for poor

Rs 100cr to innovate for poor

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published Published on Nov 16, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 16, 2011
-The Telegraph
 
The Union government today pledged Rs 100 crore to kickstart a fund that would seek to mobilise innovation focused on solving problems for sections of the population at the bottom of India’s socio-economic pyramid.

The National Innovation Council (NIC), a government think tank, which has proposed the India Inclusive Innovation Fund has said it is designed to address concerns that existing innovation has often focused more on the wants of the affluent rather than on the needs of the deprived.

The NIC is hoping that the fund will be capitalised to an eventual size of Rs 5,000 crore in the next five or 10 years, 80 per cent of the funds coming from private investors, philanthropists and bilateral and multilateral institutions.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh articulated the concerns about current innovation trends today at an event here, releasing a report of the NIC that outlines the fund’s objectives. “In recent times, we have made several innovations in areas such as space technology, atomic energy and automobiles. But innovation in our country has focused mostly on the needs of the rich and not adequately on solving the problems of the poor,” Singh said.

“We wish to change this state of affairs. We would like to pioneer a model of innovation that addresses the problems in areas such as poverty alleviation, health, rural communications, agriculture, animal husbandry, green energy and so on,” Singh said.

Minutes earlier, Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee present at the event pledged the government’s commitment to provide Rs 100 crore to “kickstart the fund”. The NIC has said the fund will support projects aimed at delivering solutions for the bottom 500 million in India’s society.

“The fund will be used to scale up innovation and push research ideas towards applications and the market,” said NIC chairperson Sam Pitroda. “We don’t want the government contribution to this fund to be greater than about 20 per cent — we’re already talking to multi-lateral agencies, businesses and others,” he said.

“This will be something like a venture-capital model for bottom-of-pyramid relevant projects,” said Raghunath Mashelkar, a member of the NIC and a former director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The fund and its investee enterprises will seek to address developmental needs in a commercially viable fashion. The fund itself will operate as a “for-profit entity” with a social investment focus and seek to provide its investors with reasonable financial returns.


The Telegraph, 16 November, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111116/jsp/nation/story_14756708.jsp


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