Introduction
With technological advancement becoming the component for achieving organizational progress, it is the endeavor of National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board(NSTEDB) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to work with organizations which specializes in scaling up and translation of various market feasible technological innovations by promoting entrepreneurship and innovation led enterprises. The i-STED Program is a focused effort to bring about an inclusive socio-economic development by addressing the challenges associated with a specific region/industry/cluster by connecting interventions of Science and Technology and innovative solutions with entrepreneurial opportunities. The existing challenges may be in some of the priority areas i.e energy, water, affordable health, affordable housing, waste management and any specific industry sector/cluster. Some of the innovative solutions/technologies identified and taken up under the program should be translated into economic gain and wealth creation. These enterprises should able to generate good societal and market acceptability. It aims at inculcating strong entrepreneurial orientation in people to translate innovative /developed S&T solutions in the market. The entrepreneurial enterprises would subsequently translate the identified innovative solutions by tapping the market opportunities and aligning with appropriate business model. The value added products and services would be offered to end customer at an affordable price to have good market outreach. The program would generate demonstrable avenues for new sustainable enterprises, large scale employment and sustainable wealth creation and thus contributing towards socio economic development in the country.
Objective
The program aims to identify challenges and issues in an area/industry/cluster and its solutions based on technological interventions and innovative approaches. These solutions needs to be further aligned with entrepreneurial opportunities to generate socio-economic development. The projects under the program would aim to demonstrate better avenues for creation of sustainable enterprises, and generation of jobs connected with the proposed technological solutions. The projects would also target to demonstrate sizeable impact creation in five year time frame.
