The Indian government is in the final stages of developing a dedicated policy for deep technologies startups, Rajesh Kumar Singh, secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) said at the Startup Mahakumbh, according to a Financial Express report. Singh said that the deep tech policy is currently going through inter-ministerial consultations and could be released soon.
Deep technology refers to advanced technologies based on some form of substantial scientific or engineering innovation. Notably, in the interim budget this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the government is planning a new scheme to strengthen research in deep tech. She mentioned that the government intends to establish a corpus of Rs. 1 lakh crore with 50 interest-free loans. This, she said, would encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation.
In context to that, it should be remembered that in July last year, the National Deep Tech Startup Policy (NDTSP) Consortium released the draft policy for this sector and put it up for public consultation till September 2023. The draft deep tech startup policy’s primary priority was increasing the gross expenditure on research and development (R&D), with an appropriate share of public and private investment, to expand the scientific base of deep tech startups. It also encouraged the set up of an “Open Science and Data Sharing platform” to facilitate knowledge sharing among the stakeholders.
Further, it proposed the establishment of a single window platform which would enable the establishment of a unified intellectual property (IP) framework customized to deep tech startups. The platform would also provide deep-tech startups with guidelines on creating design IP and implementing cybersecurity protocols to protect sensitive data. The platform would also implement monitoring mechanisms to track access and usage of confidential information, detecting and addressing unauthorized activity promptly.
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