Railways to invest Rs 50 crore in startups annually

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The Ministry of Railways on June 13 launched the Indian Railway Innovation Policy—‘StartUps for Railways’, with an annual budget of around Rs 40-50 crore, as part of its plans to invest in startups to find solutions to problems the Indian Railways is currently facing.

As part of the new policy, the government will provide a grant of up to Rs 1.5 crore, to selected startups, on an equal sharing basis with the provision of milestone-wise payment.

Startups will be selected by the Indian Railways after the national carrier floats a problem statement online for the development of a prototype.

The Indian railways will then test the prototypes developed by different startups and enhanced funding will be provided to scale up deployment on the successful performance of prototypes.

Despite the investment by the Indian Railways, the intellectual property rights (IPR) for innovations will remain with the startup or innovator.

The Indian Railways will also set up an additional fund for the divisional railway managers so that they can find on-field solutions to on-field problems, under the new policy.

The policy aims to engage with startups for developing cost-effective, implementable, scalable solutions, and functional prototypes for the national transporter.

As part of the first phase of the policy, the Indian Railways has identified 11 problem statements including broken rail detection system, rail stress monitoring system, automation of track inspection activities, and track cleaning machine, among others.

Other issues such as headway improvement system for suburban sections, interoperable with Indian railways' national ATP system, design of a superior elastomeric pad (em pad) for heavy haul freight wagons, and development of an online condition monitoring system for traction motors of three-phase electric locomotives, light-weight wagon for transporting commodities like salt, development of the analytical tool by using digital data for improving passenger services, an app for post-training revision and self-service refresher courses and use of remote sensing, geomatics, and GIS for bridge inspection have also been listed by the Indian Railways. GIS stands for geographic information system.

The 11 problem statements have been identified and uploaded on the dedicated portal for startups to start working on and building prototypes.

The timeline for the entire process along with relevant details has been given on www.innovation.indianrailways.gov.in.

Speaking during the launch of the policy, Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the new policy intends to bring scale and efficiency to the domains of operation, maintenance, and infrastructure creation by involving a large and untapped startup ecosystem in the country.

The minister added that throughout the entire developmental journey, railways’ field officers, RDSO, zonal, and railway board officers will continuously support and hand-hold the innovators.