Shri Hardeep Puri, Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs and Petroleum and Natural Gas, today they reiterated the government’s commitment to provide all support and facilitation to start-ups involved in finding solutions to promote Swachhata. He said this while interacting with startups shortlisted under the Swachhata Start-up challenge.
Highlighting some of the major challenges in the area of cleanliness, the minister said that plastic waste management, mechanized solutions for cleaning drains and septic tanks, scientific treatment of solid and liquid waste, etc. provide huge opportunities for startups to innovate and grow businesses. Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U), MoHUA in collaboration with AFD (Agence Française de Développement) and Department of Industrial Promotion and Internal Trade (DPIIT) launched the Swachhata Startup Challenge on 27 January 22 to foster an environment for startup development and entrepreneurs in the waste management sector.
The Swachhata Startup Challenge sought innovative solutions from waste management startups in four thematic areas:
- Social Inclusion,
- Zero Dump (solid waste management),
- Plastic Waste Management and
(iv) Transparency (digital Activation). The objective of the challenge was to award 10 winning solutions from Startups with financial support of ₹ 25 Lakh per selected project and 1 year incubation support. In addition, eligible startups will also receive additional incentives that include up to ₹50 million in follow-on investment from Villgro (the Challenge Implementation Partner) and up to US$100,000 worth of credits and technology support from technology partner Amazon Web Services.
As part of the call, applications were invited from January 27, 2022 to April 15, 2022, against which a total of 244 solutions were received. The applications were then screened and 30 solutions were shortlisted for the next round of evaluation by a panel of academics, industry representatives, officials, etc. The top 10 applications from these will be awarded as competition winners.
The award ceremony for the winners of this challenge is scheduled for tomorrow, September 20, 2022, at the international center Dr. Ambedkar in New Delhi. The ‘Swachhata Startup Conclave’ will be a day-long event and various activities are planned including reverse presentation of city corporations for startups, discussion on policy initiatives to support startups for Garbage Free Cities, sharing of success stories of entrepreneurs and Unicorns founders and an award ceremony in the concluding session, which will thank the winning startups.
The conclave will be attended by all Swachhata Startup Challenge startups, established startups, investors, sector partners, industry experts, municipal commissioners of million plus cities, representatives of DPIIT, Govt. of India, FCCII, CII and other associations. Around 600 participants will physically participate in the event, while all cities will participate virtually in the closing ceremony.
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