After the challenge to find a homemade video conferencing solution, the government has now launched a new startup contest. The new challenge named “Chunauti” was announced by the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The contest intends to further boost startups and software products with a special focus on Tier-II towns or smaller towns in the country. The government has earmarked a budget of Rs. 95.03 Crore over a period of three years for this programme.

The programme aims to identify around 300 startups working in identified areas and provide them seed fund of upto Rs. 25 lakh and other facilities.

Key sectors

Under the challenge, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) will invite startups in the areas like edutech, agritech and fintech solutions for masses, supply chain, logistics & transportation management, infrastructure & remote monitoring, medical healthcare, diagnostic, preventive & psychological care, jobs & skilling, linguistic tools & technologies.

The startups selected through Chunauti will be provided various support from the government through the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) centers across India.

“They will get incubation facilities, mentorship, security testing facilities, access to venture capitalist funding, industry connect as well as advisories in legal, Human Resource (HR), IPR and Patent matters,” said the government. 

Besides a seed fund of upto Rs. 25 Lakh, the startups will also be provided cloud credits from leading cloud service providers.

Start-ups who are in the ideation stage may be selected under the pre-incubation programme and mentored for up-to six months to evolve their business plan and solution around the proposed idea. Each intern will be paid Rs.10,000/- per month upto a period of 6 months.

For further details and for applying click here