To encourage universities and institutes toward start-ups, the Gujarat education department has launched an annual bench-marking system to review their progress as well as rank their performance through Student Innovation and Start-up Index (SISI).
Under the initiative, universities and institutes have to compile and submit data annually on the UDAYAM COGENT portal launched during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data would be ranked on a 1,000-point rating structure. The efforts of the best performing academic institutions will be appreciated during the annual SSIP awards — Startup Prashansa.
The macro indicators of SISI are competency, support system, and value capturing which carry 300, 300, and 400 points, respectively. Under these three macro indicators are several micro indicators, including outreach and learning, knowledge management and bench-marking, academic resources, infrastructure, awards and recognition, contextual relevance and innovation and entrepreneurship.
The policy document launched on Saturday mentions, “Under SSIP 2.0, each higher education institute (HEI) will promote and nurture innovation among the youth, it has been mandated to benchmark ‘Innovation and Startup efforts’ across universities and institutes in Gujarat. The education department has taken the decision that each HEI supporting innovation has to go through an annual bench-marking as laid out in the SISI framework to assess their progress in nurturing student innovation and start-ups.”
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The education department institutionalised the Student Startup and Innovation Policy (SSIP) 2.0 in January this year. So far, 6,944 student innovations were supported under SSIP, while 1,381 intellectual properties got filed, 2,132 student start-ups were nurtured through various flagship programmes and 186 HEIs, including 51 universities, were funded to extend support to innovators and start-ups.
The SSIP 2.0 has a provision of Rs 500 crore for the next five years, from 2022 to 2027. While the state has allocated Rs 300 crore, Rs 200 crore will be raised through matching contributions and external sources to support and nurture 10,000 innovations and start-ups in the state.
