Deadline: 5-Dec-22
Atal Innovation Mission has launched the Atal New India Challenge under the theme of Agriculture – Millet.
The Atal New India Challenges initiative by Atal Innovation Mission is aimed at supporting innovators creating products based on advanced technologies in areas of national importance and social relevance through a grant based mechanism, with access to handholding, mentoring and other technical support.
Atal New India Challenge is a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog. The program aims to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance.
One of the primary goals of the ANIC program is to incentivize innovations in areas critical to India’s development and growth – Education, Health, Water and Sanitation, Agriculture, Food Processing, Housing, Energy, Mobility, Space Application etc.
Vision
- The vision of the Atal New India Challenge (ANIC) is two-fold:
- Help create products from existing technologies that solve problems of national importance and societal relevance (productization)
- Help new solutions find markets and early customers (commercialization) in the context of India
Challenges
- Primary Processing: Processing converts the inedible grain into edible form and thereby enhancing its quality. Processing of millets plays significant role during its utilization as food. Longer shelf life, aesthetics of food and flavor and ease of cooking is what necessitates processing. However some millets require multiple processing for optimization of grain recovery and optimization of polishing to retain their nutrition value.
- Decentralized Processing: Processing of millets face several hurdles owing to variation in size of various millet types and low shelf life of the processed millets. The grains vary in terms of shape, nature of grain surface, hardness, husk-grain bonding etc. Furthermore, there are variations within the same small millet crop due to variation in varieties, cultivation practices, and microclimate across production regions.
- Shelf Life Augmentation: Millets are extremely nutritious and are proven to have health benefits. However, millets have poor shelf life once processed due to its intrinsic enzyme activity (lipase activity, lipid oxidation etc.) that causes rapid development of rancidity and bitterness. Millet products are also prone to moisture and water activity. Quality assurance thus greatly depends on different pre-treatments and / or storage conditions.
- Supply Chain Linkages: Millet supply chain suffers from inconsistent supply and demand that prevents its commercial viability. While the lack of access to HYV seeds has led to low crop productivity, the lack of public awareness about nutritional benefits of millets has led to limited adoption of millets as a ready to cook cereal. In addition, limited distribution and lack of market knowledge have resulted in sub-optimal reach, lower price realization and wastage.
Funding Information
- Funding of up to INR 1 crore for each winner start-up / MSME.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any Indian company incorporated under the Companies Act 1956/2013, primarily a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) as defined in the MSMED Act, 2006
- Any company registered as a Start-up, as defined, and recognized by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India
- The majority stake (more than 51%) of the applicant entity must be held in India.
For more information, visit Atal Innovation Mission.
