09 ^th September, 2020

Secretary, DOS has launched 3 challenges in space domain as a part of Atal New India Challenges [ANIC] - ARISE program, under NITI Aayog in the presence of Hon'ble Minister of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises- Shri Nitin Gadkari, PSA to GoI - Shri K VjayaRaghavan; ViceChairman, NITI Aayog; CEO, NITI Aayog and Dr V K Saraswat, Member,NITI Aayog Following are the 3 areas :

1. Propulsion - Green propellants, Electric propulsion, advanced air-breathing
2. Geospatial information - Geospatial information using Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence useful in crop monitoring, weather forecasting and program evaluations.
3. Robotics / Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality - application of robotics, Augmented Realty /Virtual Realty techniques supporting space exploration

10 ^th September, 2020

Followed by the ANIC-ARISE launch on 09th, DOS and AIM, Niti Aayog jointly organized a workshop on "Empowering India's Startups to transform Space Sector with ISRO and AIM" exclusively for startups and MSMEs in space domain.

Secretary, DOS addressed in the webinar and explained various opportunities and provisions being created with in ISRO to encourage the startups including the buy-back arrangements. He also announced the startup programme under ISRO"Space Entrepreneurship & Enterprise Development (SEED)" which is in anvil and preliminary discussion. He opined that the workshop shall bring more synergy for the programme to address the real-time issues for MSMEs and Startups in space domain.

Sessions on following topics were conducted.

1. Building an AtmaNirbhar Bharat by forging partnerships global tech giants for startups
2. Role of VC / Angel Investor, Incubators, Accelerators
3. Overview of proposed ISRO Start-up Support Programme
4. Opportunities in Earth Observation and space applications

Eminent speakers form Industries such as GE, CISCO and SAP, Curefit, T-Hub and NumaAccelerators shared their experience to new startups.

ISRO officials presented the focus areas and opportunities in the space domain.

More than 50 startups participated and more than 590 participated off-line