Mumbai National Innovation Council (NIC) today said that it would generate large-scale employment for the poor, especially in rural areas of the country in the next 10 years. The council is in the process of selecting domain experts and stakeholders to prepare a roadmap for the project.

“Although we have already prepared a 10-year roadmap, but the basic thing is to generate massive employment for the poor and to create an ecosystem for them during the decade. So, we need to look at various sectors with people having an entrepreneurial mindset,” said an NIC member.

 

In August 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had approved the establishment of the council with a mandate to prepare a roadmap for the “Decade of Innovation (2010-20)” by evolving a model of innovation, focusing on inclusive growth and creating an appropriate ecosystem.

 

NIC member Sujatha Ramdorai said, “Rich people always have the means to solve problems, but for those who do not, we need innovation to help them. It will take some time to streamline the process. We need innovation in term of policy and delivery. There are millions of people joining the system as far as education is concerned. They cannot be an immediate fix for all problems. It cannot be solved overnight. So we need time to reach a solution for them,” Ramdorai said at an entrepreneurship summit (E-Summit-IIT, Bombay 2011) held here on Sunday.

 

Recently, NIC has asked all state governments to set up state innovation councils to drive innovations in their respective states.

 

“We have very positive response from several state governments in this regard. But the main challenge of the council is to get more participation of the people all across the country and abroad. Also, more people should take risk and change their mindset,” Ramdorai said.

 

“While encouraging all important sectors of the economy to innovate, the NIC will take special efforts to facilitate innovation by micro, small and medium enterprises,” he added.

 

NIC, headed by Sam Pitroda, plans to build a fund of around $1-billion. “There would be very small amount of the total fund from the government only, but we will try to get from various corporate and industry sectors.”

 

The Council has already identified over 40 industry clusters under the aegis of the CII and FICCI where innovation eco-systems would be created.

 

“Our main aim is to increase industry clusters as we have only over 40 clusters so far. As far as the inclusive innovation fund is concerned, whenever and wherever if someone gets some business idea, he/she can look for some resources for funding,” she said.

 

The summit, which aims to serve as a common platform for aspiring entrepreneurs to interact, saw a host of top officials from corporate houses , including Essar, RCom, Aditya Birla Group Tech Mahindra and Sulzon Energy.