Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas &Steel Dharmendra Pradhan launched Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC) in New Delhi on 31.7.2019.This initiative aims to encourage the spirit of innovation through solution-driven design thinking to serve society.
Speaking on the occasion, Pradhan said, Atal Innovation Mission has a key role to perform in order to achieve the target of five trillion dollar economy by 2025. He urged the NITI Aayog to open innovation Centres in all Gram Panchayats of the country to promote local innovation. Pradhan said innovation is part of every Indian’s daily affairs and there is need to support and promote them. He said that traditional and conventional knowledge available in the country needs to be supported and brought into the mainstream, through innovative mechanism.
Lauding the efforts of NITI Aayog in coming up with the idea of ACICs, the Minister said that they will make available cutting-edge innovation platforms across all corners of our country, with a focus on Aspirational Districts, Tier 2 and 3 cities and to North-east and J&K which will give a boost to the skill development and employment opportunities in these areas.
ACIC’s grassroot-level approach shall focus on a community oriented problem solving through small ideas with a big impact. ACICs will become a conduit for CSR funding by private and public sector firms in addition to direct funding through Atal Innovation Mission(AIM).
ACIC is a new initiative of Atal Innovation Mission to support community innovation drive in the country. The program is directed to encourage the spirit of innovation through solution driven design thinking to serve the society. It will focus on underserved/ unserved regions of the country which at present lack a vibrant start-up and innovation ecosystem. ACIC will be established either in PPP mode or with support of PSUs and other agencies. The maximum grant-in-aid support form AIM will be up to 2.5 crores subject following compliance to ACIC guidelines and contributing matching form the host institutions and their funding partner(s).