NITI Aayog and SAP Labs India collaborate to foster digital literacy and accelerate the India startup ecosystem

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog and SAP Labs India have strengthened their partnership to promote digital literacy, innovation and entrepreneurship in India. As part of the renewed Statement of Intent (SOI), SAP will conduct Training of Trainers (ToT) under UnBox Tinkering for around 500 teachers in the next three years. SAP aims to adopt 100 Atal Tinkering Laboratories and impart digital education to 30,000 students from the states of North East, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.

Through this partnership, SAP and Atal Innovation aim to:

• Facilitate coaching and mentoring students in advanced technology topics like Electronics, Mechatronics, Internet of Things, Digital Skills and Coding, which allows them to gain hands-on experience

• Foster the entrepreneurship ecosystem

• Augment incubation centres, enhance the capacity development, provide acceleration support to the youth entrepreneurs

• Provide mentoring support to startups, ideas or incubation, and facilitate pilots with the youth-led startups

SAP, under the guidance of AIM, will create a platform for the existing 68 Atal Incubation Centers (AICs) across India. This platform will help curate and support the stakeholders' engagement and empower all incubators to connect better with their networks in an engaging way.

Through a competitive process, SAP will select and enable select startups from AICs for further accelerator support and facilitate investment for up to five startups. SAP will conduct three idea challenges in Karnataka to curate and select up to 100 youth-led or social enterprises or ideas in the next three years. The idea challenge will support 25 youth entrepreneurs to incubate their ideas, leading to fostering socio-economic development and jobs in Karnataka.

From the leaders

Mission Director Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog - R Ramanan while expressing his views said, "The collaboration between AIM and SAP Labs is of great value addition for the ATLs and the youth-led startups with the AICs. The students, teachers and the startups will hugely benefit from this partnership. Such partnerships are win-win for both AIM and its partners and equip us in creating a collaborative ecosystem, where students, teachers, mentors and industry partners work to facilitate innovation, foster scientific temper and an entrepreneurial spirit across the country.

"We are pleased to strengthen our partnership with Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL). Promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), education and digital skills among school children will enable inclusive and equitable growth in the society”, said Sindhu Gangadharan, SVP and Managing Director, SAP Labs India. "With the adoption of 100 ATL's in the next three years, SAP will equip young talent with advanced digital skills, experiential STEM education, and expertise to drive socio-economically relevant innovation at a young age. We aim to strengthen and catalyze the incubator and startup ecosystem significantly."

Since its partnership in 2018, SAP has already adopted 49 Atal Tinkering Laboratories to promote STEM education to around 9,700 secondary school children across India. Additionally, SAP has also conducted 5 UnBox Tinkering sessions and provided training to 149 teachers with topics focusing on Electronics, Mechatronics, IoT, Digital skills and Coding.