Excel India Desk
iTIC Incubator at IIT Hyderabad, in collaboration with iDEX DIO (Innovations for Defense Excellence – Defense Innovation Organization), has designed a unique program to acclimatize relevant civilian tech startups into defence applications. Acclimatization Boot Camp (ABC) for Defence Startups was launched by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, at DefExpo 2022 Gandhinagar on October 18, Tuesday.
The ABC for Defense Startups would be a 4-month long program and would select 10-12 startups in their first cohort. These startups would be connected to the knowledge partners, which include serving and retired armed forces. These mentors would understand the technology of the startup and connect the use case for the same in defencee applications.
After narrowing down the problem statement mutually, a startup would build a prototype with the help of iTIC Incubator at IIT Hyderabad and run it through mentors to validate the solution. At the end of the boot camp, startups would be trained in writing proposals for grants and procurement. The aim of this boot camp is to acclimatize a startup with civilian technology.
Rajnath Singh, while launching the program, congratulated iTIC Incubator and iDEX teams and said: “It is good to see iDEX and iTIC Incubator at IIT Hyderabad are collaborating and designing a new program. This will boost our defence ecosystem lot.’’
“Startups can apply to this program at www.itic.iith.ac.in/abcd. The deadline for applications is November 18, 2022, and the program kickstarts on December 8 onward. Benefits for startups include feedback from the defense ecosystem, access to iTIC and IITH infrastructure, proposal writing for defence procurement and grants, and access to the defence market.,”Prof B S Murty, Director IIT-H expressed his confidence in the success of the initiative and welcomed the startups to make use of this unique program.
