India-Denmark join hands through Atal Innovation Mission for global collaboration on innovative solutions

New Delhi: As part of the Indo-Danish bilateral Green strategic partnership, India is all set to take a giant leap towards building a world-class innovation ecosystem as Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) of India’s premier policy think tank NITI Aayog and Embassy of Denmark to India on 12th April officially announced their collaboration.

Under this ambitious partnership, Innovation Center Denmark in India will collaborate with AIM to support various current and future initiatives of AIM, NITI Aayog, and its beneficiaries in India as well as develop global innovation Green economy partnerships addressing SDG goals.

A Statement of Intent (SoI) was signed between AIM, NITI Aayog and Embassy of Denmark to India here at NITI Aayog premises. The purpose of SoI is to jointly work towards promoting innovation and entrepreneurship amongst aspiring entrepreneurs. The partnership would be executed through Innovation Center Denmark (ICDK) under the aegis of the Embassy of Denmark.

Vice-Chairman NITI Aayog Dr Rajiv Kumar while lauding the step said “I look forward to this collaboration very much and I hope that whatever we do, we will also focus on water use in agriculture that takes up to 92 percent of the water. I hope with this collaboration we can bring something very innovative in this field as well besides the others.”

The partnership between India and Denmark holds great potential said CEO NITI Aayog Amitabh Kant while sharing his thoughts on the occasion. “For impactful innovation across multiple sectors, this partnership upholds a great potential. Through such global collaborations, we can align research and development efforts to achieve results in an accelerated manner even in these challenging times,” He asserted.

Freddy Svane, Denmark’s ambassador to India in his address said that water is a substance that cannot be replaced and we need to use all kinds of innovative thinking to make use of it so that future generations do not face a lot of water challenges as compared to the current scenario.

The ambassador stressed on three key and crucial points Water, Women, and the World. He said “water is the stream of life hence its importance for present and future generations cannot be stressed enough. Women empowerment is key to the growth of a nation and to the sustainability goals of the World. If we do not solve water management and challenges issue, regardless of the location, it will impact lives across the world.”

He stressed upon the 10 innovations that Denmark and India recently identified through the water innovation challenge that was organised in collaboration with AIM. He said the 10 innovations would play a crucial role in solving water issues and many such innovation collaborations should be taken up through this partnership to address a wide range of issues. He also said that the collaborations would also allow Danish innovations to work on addressing water issues faced in India.

In his address, Mission Director Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog R Ramanan said that “This is a very comprehensive collaboration of all our initiatives and particularly focusing on SDG goals and how the SDG goals can be translated into products that can be rolled out to global markets. Our recently launched water challenge with Innovation Center Denmark (ICDK) and the Denmark Technical University (DTU) was also great success and has resulted in a strong relationship with Denmark.”

He added that the 10 innovation teams identified in the challenge are being provided support to develop their products through partners onboarded specifically for the purpose. The Indian teams along with their peers from 5 countries will now participate in the global finals to be held in May 2021. The collaboration between AIM and ICDK, Embassy of Denmark to India would enable both parties to take up more such innovation challenges.

Meanwhile, as part of the SoI, The Collaboration between AIM and Embassy of Denmark in India will help Indian innovators access Danish technical expertise and allow Danish Innovators to work on India specific solutions.

AIM-ICDK shall also explore various areas of collaboration such as AIM-Denmark school students innovation exchange and co-innovation development, hosting Indo-Denmark innovation challenges, facilitating startup-incubator collaborations and exchanges, and promotion of startup and entrepreneurship events and competitions through the networks and channels of both parties.

AIM and ICDK have previously collaborated to host the AIM-ICDK Water challenge and the SoI between the two would pave the way for such future collaborations that allow innovation exchanges between two countries.