The Indian Railways on Tuesday said it received 1,251 proposals from startups under the ‘StartUps for Railways’ initiative launched in 2022.

In an official statement, the Railways said, “Indian Railways has taken an important initiative in the field of innovation through participation of start-ups and other entities. Startups for Railways initiative was launched by Ministry of Railways on 13.06.2022… Total entities registered on Innovation Portal-1251.” It further listed the sectors and the number of proposals from each.

“Startups- 248, Individual Innovators- 671, MSMEs-142, R&D organizations/Institutes-58, Proprietorship/Partnership firms/Company/ LLP/JV/Consortium-47, NGOs-19, Others-66.”

The railways further said that the value of the projects awarded under this initiative is Rs. 43.87 Crore.

It also added, “The Objective is to leverage innovative technologies developed by Indian Startups/MSMEs/Innovators/Entrepreneurs to improve operational efficiency and safety on Indian Railways. Ministry of Railways aims to address quality, reliability and maintainability-related issues of the Indian Railways…”

Earlier during its launch in 2022, the Railways minister said that through this platform start-ups would get a good opportunity to connect with Railways.

Features of the railway’s innovation policy:

• Grant up to Rs. 1.5 Crore to innovator on equal sharing basis with provision of milestone-wise payment.
• De-centralisation of product development process at divisional level to avoid delays.
• Developed Intellectual property rights (IPR) to remain with innovator only.
• Trials of prototypes to be done in Railways. Enhanced funding to be provided to scale up deployment on successful performance of prototypes.
• Selection of Innovators to be done by transparent and fair system which will be dealt through online portal.