Government think-tank NITI Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and Embassy of Denmark in India signed an agreement to jointly work towards promoting innovation and entrepreneurship among aspiring entrepreneurs. 

Under this bilateral ‘Green Strategic Partnership’, Innovation Center Denmark (ICDK) in India will collaborate with various initiatives of AIM, NITI Aayog and its beneficiaries in India as well as develop global innovation green economy partnerships addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

A Statement of Intent (SoI) was signed between AIM, Niti Aayog and embassy of Denmark in  India. The purpose of SoI is to jointly work towards promoting innovation and entrepreneurship amongst the aspiring entrepreneurs. The partnership would be executed through ICDK under the aegis of embassy of Denmark.

Denmark's Ambassador to India Freddy Svane stressed upon the 10 innovations that Denmark and India recently identified through the water innovation challenge that was organised in collaboration with AIM.

He said the 10 innovations would play a crucial role in solving water issues and many such innovation collaborations should be taken up through this partnership to address a wide range of issues. 

Also, as part of the SoI, the collaboration between AIM and embassy of Denmark will help Indian innovators access Danish technical expertise and allow Danish Innovators to work on India specific solutions.

AIM-ICDK shall also explore various areas of collaboration such as AIM-Denmark school students innovation exchange and co-innovation development, hosting Indo-Denmark innovation challenges, facilitating startup-incubator collaborations and exchanges, and promotion of startup and entrepreneurship events and competitions through the networks and channels of both parties.

What is meant by Green Strategic Partnership?

The Green Strategic Partnership is a mutually beneficial arrangement to advance political cooperation, expand economic relations and green growth, create jobs and strengthen cooperation on addressing global challenges and opportunities, with focus on an ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Atal Innovation Mission

• AIM is a flagship initiative set up by NITI Aayog to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across the country.

• AIM is also envisaged as an umbrella innovation organisation that would play an instrumental role in alignment of innovation policies between central, state and sectoral innovation schemes.

• It promotes an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship at various levels — higher secondary schools, science, engineering and higher academic institutions, and SME/MSME industry, corporate and NGO levels.

Major initiatives undertaken by AIM are:

• Establishment of ATLs in schools to create a problem-solving mindset in students between classes 6–12.

• Establishment of Atal Incubation Centres (AICs) in universities, institutions, and the private sector to foster world-class startups, as well as adding new dimensions of outcome-based scale-up and monitoring of existing incubator models.

• Launch of Atal New India Challenges (ANICs) to foster product and service innovations in the country with national socio-economic impact and aligning them to the sectoral needs of various ministries/industry and with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

• Establishment of Atal Community Innovation Centres (ACICs) in the unserved/underserved regions of the country, including tier-2 and tier-3 cities and in the hinterland, to stimulate community-centric innovations and create local hubs of innovation and job creation.

• Launch of Applied Research and Innovation Challenges for Small Enterprises (ARISE) to stimulate Make in India research and innovations in the MSME industry.

• Establish a nationwide voluntary Mentors of Change network to support all the initiatives of AIM.

• Building strategic innovation partnerships with the public and private sectors and multinationals, and country-to-country partnerships to promote collaborations and cross-border innovation exchanges.

According to NITI Aayog, AIM’s initiatives have played an important role in the advancement of India from a position of 81 in the Global Innovation Index in 2015 to a position of 48 in 2020.

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