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Railways to Invest Rs 50 Crore a Year in Startups

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Railways to Invest Rs 50 Crore a Year in Startups
14 Jun 2022
5 min read

News Synopsis

The Indian Railroad invests more than Rs 50 crore a year to fund startups, Federal Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Monday, unlike other such collaborations, intellectual property rights for innovation (IPR) will remain in the innovator.

Under the Indian Railways Innovation Policy, railways have made a good start by investing in startups and procuring innovation directly from startups, up to Rs 1.5 crore for innovative technology solutions for national transporters

Indian Railway Innovation Policy enables Indian innovators to work with rail to develop cost-effective, implementable, and scalable solutions and functional prototypes for national carriers.

In May, the field unit was asked to provide the problem areas. As a response to this, about 160 problems have occurred so far. First, 11 issues were confirmed to be addressed through new innovation policies and uploaded to the website, the minister said.

These include damaged rail detection systems, rail tension monitoring systems, track inspection techniques for accurate inspection, and excellent elastic pads for large freight cars.

It also works on improvements to light wagons for transporting products such as salt, rail cleaners, applications for post-training review and self-service refresher courses, using remote sensing, geomatics, GIS, or bridge inspection, and development of analytical tools using digital data to improve passenger service.