AIM-PRIME Playbook to help academicians launch deep-tech spin-offs

New Delhi: The nationwide AIM-PRIME program, an initiative of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog culminated recently at an event. The program was implemented by Venture Center, Pune and is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Office of Principal Scientific Advisor.

The AIM PRIME (Program for Researchers in Innovation, Market Readiness and Entrepreneurship) program was aimed at promoting early-stage science-based, deep technology ideas to market through training and guidance over a period of 12 months using a blended learning curriculum.

The first cohort of the AIM PRIME program consisted of science-based startups, faculty entrepreneurs and incubator managers, where they worked on progressing their idea by teaming up with an incubator. The cohort included 40 organizations and 64 participants, representing 23 different cities across 7 states. The cohort represented a wide variety of science-based sectors, including industrial automation, IoT, electronics, robotics, energy and environment, health and rehabilitation, and food, nutrition and agriculture. Over 17 national and international faculty members were on-boarded as part of the program, who have collectively spent more than 640 hours on mentoring.

Speaking at the launch event, Dr. Premnath, director Venture Center said, “The Venture Center team and the AIM PRIME faculty and mentors are so excited to see the final outcomes of the program with most startups making significant progress in their investor readiness and the cohort even raising almost Rs 20 crore in funding within the duration of the program itself. 18 patents were filed and 6 patents and 2 trademarks were issued. Over 15 key partnerships have been forged with marquee companies such as Mahindra, and Kimberly Clark during the course of the program.”

Talking at the event, Chief Guest, Suman Bery, Vice-Chair of NITI Aayog, said “Startups represent an important part of the economy that shape the future industries of the world and thus can shape the jobs, products and economy of the future. Science-based startups are particularly exciting due to their potential for delivering large scale social impact (like for example, via vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, climate change resistant crops, carbon capture technologies etc) but also providing India the opportunity to leap-frog into the future and position itself as a leading innovation-led country of the world. Programs like AIM PRIME can nurture vehicles that can attract capital into high risk-reward pursuits — something that can be important for achieving higher growth rates in the country.”

Guest of Honour, Dr. Bharati Pawar, Union Minister of State, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said: “During COVID, we saw startups rise up to the occasion and make very important contributions in diagnostics, PPEs, ventilators and last mile vaccine delivery. This demonstrated the potential that Indian startups hold in solving problems in the Indian healthcare sector. We also realized that developing products in sectors like healthcare need deep technical knowledge and new inventions, and thus there is a need to nurture science-based deep tech startups. India has chosen to invest in science and build indigenous R&D capacity for many years now.”

Dr. Chintan Vaishnav. Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission said: “The AIM-PRIME program was focused on promoting science-based deep-tech entrepreneurship, which is a knowledge intensive pursuit. The first year of AIM PRIME was also aimed at exploring and demonstrating methods and content for accelerating such startups that are India-appropriate, and making it available to all innovators and entrepreneurs. I am pleased to see that the first year of this program has been able to train a group of trainers who can scale the program in multiple locations. Further, it has also led to creation of a Playbook and course videos that are available to everyone freely under an open access model. These are all valuable contributions of a quality comparable to any top innovation ecosystem of the world.”