There exists a direct co-relation between innovation, entrepreneurship and the economic development of a nation as established through various international studies. Innovation drives global competitiveness and the country which provides the impetus to knowledge and innovation reaps its rewards. One of the differentiating factors between various developed and developing economies is the level of academic entrepreneurship in the national innovation system. The fact is, in most of the countries, the development of the national innovation system has been policy-driven to focus not only on R&D, but also on fostering mechanisms for the science-innovation-industry interface, skills and innovation potential of human capital, technology transfer and commercialisation, efficient and transparent regulatory systems, enforcement of intellectual property protection, understanding of market dynamics, open trade and investment in a stable environment.

In a developing and emerging economy like India, the innovation ecosystem is still evolving though the country over the years has emerged as a large publicly funded R&D infrastructure. Realising that innovation is the engine for national and global growth, employment, competitiveness and sharing of opportunities in the 21st century, the Government of India had embarked on some of the key nation building initiatives. The Government along with other key stakeholders are making serious and sincere efforts to create a sustainable yet progressive environment for the innovation based entrepreneurship to emerge and flourish through variety of new initiatives and partnerships. Therefore, efforts are already underway by creating new opportunities, new mechanisms and instruments, an enabling environment and ecosystem for entrepreneurs and startups to be a change agent for a dynamic and sustained economic growth.

Under Startup India, DST is playing a critical and pioneering role in building up the institutional framework of innovation ecosystem. The National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB)is the nodal body under the aegis of Department of Science & Technology to help promote technology based entrepreneurship and also facilitate nurturing of knowledge-driven and technology intensive startup enterprises. In addition, the Department has set up an autonomous body as its financing arm to provide financial assistance through soft loans and equity to Indian companies and technology startups to commercialise indigenous technologies and also for adoption of foreign technologies.

More than 100 Technology Business Incubators in academic and R&D institutions of repute has been established. These institutions include IITs, IIMs, NITs and others.

Each of these incubators is either focused on a technology domain or mix domains and combined together house more than 2000 startups. These Incubators offer a total incubation space of approximately 700 thousands sq.ft. Many successful and high growth stories have emerged out of these incubators.

One of the differentiating factors between various developed and developing economies is the level of academic entrepreneurship in the national innovation system

In addition, DST has also partnered with Department of Higher Education, MHRD to establish Research Parks and Startup Centres in National Institutions of Importance. To support some other missing links of innovation value chain, variety of other new programs including a fellowship program for Entrepreneurs i.e EIR- Entrepreneurs in Residence, scaling of startups through accelerator program has also been formulated.

It has partnered with large corporates like Intel, Lockheed Martin, Texas Instruments and Boeing to initiate variety of technology driven and innovation based programs to promote startups. ‘The Power of Ideas' is a big innovative idea hunt program of the country in public private partnership mode with leading financial newspaper, the Economic Times and the DST through CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad. The event attracts largest innovative ideas entries in the range of 15,000-16000. The India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP)is a joint initiative of the DST, Govt. of India; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry; Stanford Graduate School of Business, the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas, and TiE Silicon Valley. The aim of this programme is to accelerate innovative Indian technologies into the global markets. The India Innovation Growth Program is the only program of its kind, because of its focus on mentoring on world-class commercialization strategies and the business development assistance provided.DST has for the first time initiated a hardware systems incubation program Plugin in partnership with Intel and implemented by Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Bombay. Intel is also partner of DST in steering socially relevant and market ready solutions through Innovate for Digital India program now running in its second version, through the largest incubator in the country t-Hub, Hyderabad. Texas Instruments has also partnered with DST to ignite engineering students from all over the country to design, incubate and launch startups through India Innovation Challenge 2016 with IIM,Bangalore being the implementation partner. Three women centric entrepreneurship promotion and acceleration programs have already been initiated by the Department in partnership with Anita Borg Institute, Zone start-ups, Bombay Stock exchange-Mumbai and IIT-Delhi. Top Women Entrepreneurs are also awarded with an all paid exposure visit to Silicon Valley ecosystem.

Policy Enablers: The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has mandated through a law, the Companies (Corporate Social Responsibility Policy) Rules, 2014, commonly referred to as the CSR Rules with effect from 1st April 2014. Under this, every company, private limited or public limited, which either has a net worth of Rs.5 billion, or a turnover of Rs.10 billion, or net profit of Rs.50 million, needs to spend at least two percent of its average net profit for the immediately preceding three financial years on corporate social responsibility activities. Support to Technology Business Incubators support by Government has been included as a part of CSR activity.

State level Enablers: Various States in India are giving special emphasis for promoting innovation and entrepreneurship. The state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and UP already have or are in the process of implementing new startup policy to encourage innovation and technology driven enterprises.

Way Forward: India is a large and diverse country that has its own set of issues and challenges but these problems also present an opportunity. The seed of this opportunity for start-ups are being sown with Government’s thrust in various sectors and by mobilising appropriate resources including quality manpower. The Department has already committed a budget of Rs.5000 million for next few years under its ambitious program NIDHI under the Startup India Initiative.