Atma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge: PM Modi asks startups to build apps ecosystem

Days after the government banned 59 Chinese apps, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission - Niti Aayog has launched Digital India Atma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge for Indian tech entrepreneurs and start-ups. Launched and promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Innovation Challenge has been made available on mygov website from July 4. The last date of submission of entries is July 18.

The objective is to support and build a strong ecosystem for Indian apps and help realise the vision of PM Modi for building a Digital India and using Digital Technologies for building an Atma Nirbhar Bharat.

This App Innovation Challenge includes the promotion of existing apps as well as the development of new apps. Categorised into two tracks, the Track 1 Innovation Challenge will identify the best Indian apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world-class apps in their respective categories. To be completed in a month, this Innovation Challenge with various cash awards and incentives of featuring apps on leaderboards seeks to create an ecosystem where Indian entrepreneurs and startups are incentivised to ideate, incubate, build, nurture and sustain technology solutions to serve Indian citizens as well as their world. The Mantra is to Make in India for India and the World. Track 1 has been categorised in 8 broad categories including office productivity and work from home, social networking, e-learning, entertainment, health and wellness, business including agritech and fin-tech, news and games.

Subsequent to this App Innovation Challenge, government will also launch Track 2 of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge that will seek to identify Indian start-ups, entrepreneurs, companies and encourage them with ideation,  incubation, prototyping and roll out of applications.

In a post published on LinkedIn, Prime Minister spoke about the vibrant tech and startup ecosystem in India. He said that there is a lot of enthusiasm among the start-up and tech ecosystem to innovate, develop and promote homegrown apps. This challenge will be jointly hosted by the government and members of the tech community to make it more holistic.

Prime Minister shared ideas and asked if technology can help make traditional Indian games more popular, if apps can be developed to help people in rehabilitation or getting counselling or if apps with targeted and smart access to the right age group for learning, gaming, etc can be developed. He urged the tech community to participate and help create an Atma Nirbhar App Ecosystem.

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