Shri Hardeep Puri, Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs and Petroleum & Natural Gas, today recapitulated the devotion to the Government to yield all underpin to the start-ups engaged in finding solutions for promoting Swachhata. He said this in an interaction with the startups shortlisted under the Swachhata Startup challenge.
The Minister expressed that plastic waste management, mechanized solutions to sewer and septic tank cleaning, scientific processing of solid and liquid waste, etc. bear huge opportunities for Startups for innovation and enterprise development.
Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U), MoHUA in collaboration with AFD (Agence Française de Développement) and the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), have initiated the Swachhata Startup Challenge on 27th Jan’22 to espouse an empowering environment for development startups and entrepreneurs in the waste management stratum.
The Swachhata Startup Challenge sought innovative solutions from Startups in the waste management domain under four aspects, viz,
(i) Social Inclusion,
(ii) Zero Dump (Solid Waste Management)
(iii) Plastic Waste Management, and
(iv) Transparency (Digital Enablement).
Does the challenge propose to award 10 winning solutions from Startups with financial support? 25 Lakh per selected project and 1-year maturing support.
Apart from this, entitled startups will also be incentified additionally which includes up to 50 Lakh of follow-on investment from Villgro (implementation partner of the challenge) and up to 100,000 USD worth of credits & technology support from Amazon Web Services.
As part of the provocation, applications were bid from 27th January 2022 to 15th April 2022, against which a total of 244 solutions were received. Subsequently, screening of applications was done. 30 solutions were shortlisted for the next round of evaluation by a Jury that constituted of academicians, industry representatives, officials, etc. The top 10 applications among these will be awarded.
The award ceremony to glorify winners of the challenge is scheduled to be held tomorrow 20th September 2022, at Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi.
The award event ‘Swachhata Startup Conclave’ will be a day-long ceremony and various activities are planned, including reverse pitch by Municipal Corporations to Startups, discussion on policy initiatives for promoting Startups for Garbage Free Cities, sharing of success stories by entrepreneurs & founders of Unicorns, and the award ceremony in the concluding session to felicitate the winning startups.
The conclave will be attended by all Startups of Swachhata Startup Challenge, established Startups, Investors, Sector Partners, Industry experts, Municipal Commissioners of million-plus cities, representatives from DPIIT, Govt. of India, FCCII, CII, and other associates. Around 600 participants are likely to physically attend the event while all cities will virtually join the closing punctilio.