Startup India Innovation Week begins today

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Startup India Innovation Week, organised by the Commerce and Industry Ministry's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), begins on January 10, with the aim to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.

The event comes at a time when startups battle the so-called funding winter, which has led to layoffs. Education technology firms have been hit particularly hard as the coronavirus-induced growth slows down with the return to school, colleges and tuition centres.

The Startup India Innovation Week 2023 aims to engage the ecosystem stakeholders across the nation during January 10-16 period to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in India, the ministry said in a release.

It will include opportunities such as knowledge-sharing sessions for entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and other enablers, involving relevant stakeholders from the ecosystem such as government officials, incubators, corporates and investors, the release said.

Dedicated workshops for women entrepreneurs, training of incubators, mentorship workshops, stakeholder round tables, conferences, capacity building workshops, startup pitching sessions would also be organised through the week.

Winners of the National Startup Awards 2022 will be felicitated on the National Startup Day on January 16.

The ministry said a ceremony would “recognize and reward” the excellence exhibited by startups and ecosystem enablers across different sectors, sub-sectors, and categories.

The DPIIT recently said it was in the process of undertaking a third-party assessment of Startup India Seed Fund Scheme to see its impact on the ground.

Shruti Singh, a joint secretary in DPIIT, said though the department received "good" feedback from incubators and startups, "we are still doing a third-party assessment so that somebody on the ground can go and see".