In a good news to startups working in the marine sector, Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Madras have joined hands to support them using a corpus fund of Rs 50 crore.
The new tie-up will provide a platform for young and talented entrepreneurs to develop products/services in the marine space with financial support provided by CSL. According to an official release, startups can get up to Rs 50 lakh as seed grant and Rs one crore as prototyping grants. There will also be equity funding for startups at the scale-up stage.
The agreement was signed between IIT Madras director Prof V Kamakoti and Deepu Surendran, general manager (C-SAS), CSL. The release said “IIT Madras will act as one of the implementation partners of this initiative and will provide incubation, mentorship, and training to startups selected under the programme.”
The institute will invite applications online twice a year to identify startups for funding under seed funds, pilot grants, and equity investment schemes. This is part of the startup engagement program ‘USHUS’, launched by CSL to augment the Union Government’s initiatives to encourage and develop an ecosystem in India for supporting maritime startups.
The startups selected under the scheme would have to work on innovation, improvement of products, processes, or services, and present a scalable business model with a high potential for employment generation and wealth creation. The amount disbursed under this scheme to startups can be used to meet their operational and capital expenditures, including working capital, purchase of fixed assets, and other expenses.
“Management of the maritime sector is increasingly becoming automated, posing interesting challenges to the creative minds. The current partnership shall undoubtedly lead to many innovative Atmanirbhar solutions,” the release quoted Prof Kamakoti as saying. CSL CMD Madhu S Nair said “as an initial step CSL has declared a corpus of Rs 50 crore for our startup engagement program ‘USHUS’. We are also happy to have IIT Madras as our partner in this endeavour.”
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