National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations (NIDHI) is an umbrella programme conceived and developed by the Innovation & Entrepreneurship division, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, for nurturing ideas and innovations (knowledge-based and technology-driven) into successful startups. The programme would work in line with the national priorities and goals and its focus would be to build an innovation driven entrepreneurial ecosystem with an objective of socioeconomic development through wealth and job creation.
NIDHI aims to nurture start-ups through scouting, supporting and scaling of innovations. The key stakeholders of NIDHI includes various departments and ministries of the central government, state governments, academic and R & D institutions, mentors, financial institutions, angel investors, venture capitalists and private sectors. NIDHI is developed keeping in line the new national aspirations and on the basis of DST’s experience of three decades, in promoting innovative start-ups.
Objectives
- To enable translation of an innovative idea to a prototype.
- To provide a platform for faster experimentation and modify approaches in the idea to market journey.
- To generate innovative solutions relevant to the local and global problems.
- To attract a large number of youth who demonstrates problem solving zeal and abilities
- To work on their new technology/knowledge/innovation based startups.
- To enhance the pipeline in terms of quality and quantity of innovative startups to the incubators.
- To build a vibrant innovation ecosystem, by establishing a network between innovators, academia, mentors and incubators.