By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 11, 2018: THE Startup India Yatra van will travel to 10 cities of Madhya Pradesh, starting from the capital Bhopal, to spread awareness about Startup India and Madhya Pradesh Startup Policy. The vehicle, with experts on board, will provide an opportunity for entrepreneurial talents to pitch an idea and get incubated, scaling it from idea to enterprise. The van is expected to travel to nearly 25 colleges, and one-day boot camps will be conducted in all the destinations. The Yatra will begin on July 16 th, 2018, covering 10 districts and 15 institutions over a span of 30 days. Startup India Yatraaims to scout grass root level entrepreneurs in the smaller towns of India, providing a platform for budding entrepreneurs to realize their Startup dream.

Startup India Yatra's technology partner, Shrofile, a video-based personality evaluation platform headquartered in Gurugram, will record ideas of entrepreneurs from Madhya Pradesh via the Startup India mobile van. Entrepreneurs will record their ideas on the Startup India App screens, which will be shared with the Startup India team for evaluation and selection.Prior to Madhya Pradesh, the Yatra had travelled to the  States of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Uttarakhand.

In Gujarat, the initiative covered the five cities ofAnand, Vasad, Mehsana, Jetalpur, and Ahmedabad in the months of July and August 2017. Around 300startups pitched their ideas and 22 incubation offers were made from IIM Ahmedabad and Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA).

In Uttar Pradesh the Yatra travelled to seven cities:  Agra, Bareilly, Kanpur, Lucknow, Sultanpur, Varanasi, and Noida in November and December 2017. Selected startups received incubation offers from IIT BHU, IIT Kanpur, iB Hubs, BIMTECH and IIM Lucknow. The event witnessed a participation of over 5,000 people and around 350startups pitched their ideas of which 44startups were selected for incubation.

In Odisha, post the Yatra flag off, boot camps were conducted in 16 districts in January and February 2018, impacting over 10,000 aspiring entrepreneurs. 3,600 startups pitched their ideas, of which 76 received incubation offers. KIIT Bhubaneshwar also offered a prototype grant to top 7 incubators ranging from INR 1-7 lakhs.

The Startup India Yatra impacted over 3,500 students in Uttarakhand, travelling to 12 districts in April 2018, and providing them trainings on building business models. The initiative witnessed 1,000 startups pitching their ideas, and extended cash prize and incubation offers to more than 20Startups.

To promote job creation in tier 2 and tier 3 towns and cities, Startup India organizes the Startup India Yatra in one state every month. The Yatra conducts boot camps where students are taught lessons in business planning followed by a pitch fest where ideas are invited. Shortlisted business ideas get incubated in State run incubators. A total of 19,000 students across 40 districts have benefitted from the Yatra through the boot camps, with over 90 received grants or incubation offers from the State governments.

The Startup India initiative of the Government of India envisages to build a robust startup ecosystem in the country for nurturing innovation and providing opportunities to budding entrepreneurs. In tandem with this mission, the program has been able to gather registration of 10,999 startups , generating employment to 1,09,869 people .

This large-scale generation of employment is a result of consistent efforts to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship. The States Startup Ranking Framework was launched by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) in February 2018, with the aim to foster competitiveness and to propel the states and union territories to work proactively towards promotion of their startup eco-systems. This was also targeted at facilitating states and UTs to identify, learn and replicate good practices from each other and for bringing to the fore, their own progress.