Guwahati: Indian Railways today launched a policy for Startups for Railways to bring scale and efficiency in the field of operation, maintenance, and infrastructure creation through the participation of a very large and untapped startup ecosystem.

The policy was launched by the Minister of Railways, Communications, and Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw today.

The Indian Railway Innovation Policy states that the railways would invest in startups to acquire a head start on acquiring ideas directly from them, with a guarantee of up to Rs 1.5 crore in seed money for new technical solutions for the national transporter.

Speaking at the event, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the long-going discussions over the integration of technology into Indian Railways have taken a firm shape in form of this initiative launched today.

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also announced that Indian Railways will invest more than Rs 50 crore per year to finance startups, stressing that, unlike previous similar collaborations, intellectual property rights (IPR) for ideas will remain with the inventor.

"The yearly budget for the policy would be roughly Rs 40-50 crore, with an extra amount for divisional railway administrators to discover on-field solutions to on-field difficulties.

The funding model has been agreed upon in equal parts - 50:50 - by the Indian Railways and an innovator.

Expressing his happiness on the launch of this initiative the Minister said that "If startups work with Indian Railways, great inventive solutions can emerge and many technology difficulties can be overcome".

Out of over 100 problem statements received from different divisions, field offices/zones of Railways, 11 problem statements like rail fracture, headway reduction etc. have been taken up for phase 1 of this program. These will be presented before the start-ups to find innovative solutions.

He stated that the railroads' field officers, RDSO, zonal, and railway board officers will consistently support and assist the innovators throughout their development path.

According to him, the Indian Railway Innovation Policy would identify and empower Indian innovators to work with the railways to build cost-effective, implementable, scalable solutions and functioning prototypes for the national transporter.

Railway Minister requested the startups to use this opportunity and ensured them of support from Indian Railways in form of 50 percent capital grant.

Salient details of Indian Railway Innovation Policy are as under:-

• Grant up to Rs. 1.5 crore to innovator on an equal sharing basis with the provision of milestone-wise payment.
• Complete process from floating the problem statement to the development of the prototype, is online with a defined timeline to make it transparent and objective.
• Trials of prototypes will be done on Railways. Enhanced funding will be provided to scale up deployment on the successful performance of prototypes.
• Selection of Innovator/s will be done by a transparent and fair system which will be dealt with through an online portal inaugurated today by the Minister of Railways.
• Developed Intellectual property rights (IPR) will remain with innovators only.
• Assured developmental order to innovator.
• De-centralization of the complete product development process at the divisional level to avoid delays.

In the month of May, field units were asked to provide problem areas. In response to it, around 160 problem statements have been received to date. To start with, 11 problem statements have been identified to deal with via new Innovation Policy and uploaded on the portal.

It also sought innovations for light-weight waggons transporting commodities such as salt, track cleaning machines, an app for post-training revision and self-service refresher courses, the use of remote sensing, geomatics, GIS, or bridge inspection, and the creation of analytical tools based on digital data to improve passenger services.

Vaishnaw stated that the selection process will be open, transparent, and fair, with innovators submitting their proposals with appropriate documentation to a dedicated portal, the Indian Railway Innovation Portal, at www.innovation.indianrailways.gov.in.

Individual innovators and micro, small, and medium businesses (MSME) as defined in the MSME Act, 2006 will be among the qualifying organisations or recipients of the funding. The policy also fosters institutes of research and development.