AIM-iCREST

Recently NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), has launched AIM iCREST in a partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wadhwani Foundation.

AIM-iCREST

• It has been designed to enable the incubation ecosystem and act as a growth hack for AIM’s Atal and Established incubators across the country.
• This is a first of its kind initiative for advancing innovation at scale in India.
• Under the initiative, the AIM’s incubators are set to be upscaled and provided requisite support to foster the incubation enterprise economy that will help them to significantly enhance their performance.
• This will be complemented by providing training to entrepreneurs, through technology-driven processes and platforms.

Aim

• The program aims at going beyond incubator capacity building.
• This programme is unique also in its design
• it is a combination of interactive practices in the field of incubation;
• enabling the incubators to support sustainable and successful startups.

Atal Innovation Mission

• The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is a flagship initiative set up by the NITI Aayog to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across the length and breadth of the country.
• It is also envisaged as an umbrella innovation organization that would play an instrumental role in the alignment of innovation policies between central, state and sectoral innovation
• It helps in incentivizing the establishment and promotion of an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship at various levels – higher secondary schools, science, engineering and higher academic institutions, and SME/MSME industry, corporate and NGO levels.

UPSC