Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched the fifth edition of Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC 5.0), an initiative under the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) that acts as an umbrella organisation to promote technology development for the defence sector. 

What is the purpose of iDEX?

• Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) is a scheme formulated in collaboration with Startup India and Atal Innovation Mission, with the objective of bringing startups to innovate, develop technology and solve problems related to defence and aerospace. 

• It was launched on April 12, 2018. 

• It aims to create an ecosystem to foster innovation and technology development in defence and aerospace by engaging industries including MSMEs, startups, individual innovators, R&D institutes and academia and provide them grants/funding and other support to carry out R&D. It is expected that India can take advantage of its vibrant startup ecosystem to develop technologies related to defence and aerospace. 

• The government has earmarked Rs 1,000 crore for domestic procurement through iDEX for financial year 2021-2022 and approved a budget of Rs 498.8 crore for the next five years to support over 300 startups and foster innovation in defence & aerospace sectors.

• Under the iDEX scheme, Defence India Startup Challenges (DISCs) are being organised.

What is DISC?

• DISC comprises challenges identified by Indian forces/defence PSUs/Ordnance Factory Board, which are thrown to startups to respond. 

• The first edition of the Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC) was launched on August 4, 2018 at Bengaluru, wherein innovators, organisations as well as individuals were presented with eleven ‘problem statements’ for resolution.

• With the previous four editions of DISC more than 80 startups, MSMEs and individual innovators have been declared as winners in over 40 technological areas.

• The launch of DISC 5.0 is a massive leap towards leveraging the startup ecosystem to develop India’s defence technologies, equipment design and manufacturing capabilities. It will encourage startups to become more attuned to innovative concepts and inculcate the approach of creative thinking in India’s budding entrepreneurs.

• As many as 35 problem statements – 13 from the Services and 22 from Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) – were unveiled under DISC 5.0. These are in areas such as situational awareness, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, aircraft-trainer, non-lethal devices, 5G network, underwater domain awareness, swarm drones and data capturing.

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