The president Ram Nath Kovind on Friday advocated for support from entrepreneurs to innovators. He was addressing at an event 'FINE 2019', the Festival of Innovation and Entrepreneurship held at Gram Bharti Sansthan near Gandhinagar.
The president also gave away awards to grass root level innovators. Speaking at the gathering, he said, "We need to build an ecosystem for converting innovations into enterprises. These could be commercial or social enterprises, the form does not matter as long as the enterprise enables innovation to actually make an impact. This necessarily requires support for start-ups and for incubating young innovators."
"It is critical to connect all the links of incubating innovations into enterprises by providing financial, mentoring and policy support. We need to strengthen our capacities to connect science, technology and innovation with market, commercial success and public good," the President Kovind added.
The president suggested to all the people present at the event to scale up the impact of innovations on national and global levels. He also said that when innovation is supported by an enterprise, it benefits the nation at large creating more employment. He also pushed for innovation based education system in schools.
The event organised in Rashtrapati Bhavan every year decided to hold it outside the venue this year. The awards were conferred to the innovators who developed a new variety of cauliflower, Pomegranate Deseeder and Areca nut peeler and a Bamboo splitting machine.
The president also said that the NIF has been working on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi to strengthen the nation through making villages self-reliant by the concept of Gram Swaraj.
He said, "Gandhiji strongly advocated finding local solutions to local problems. This thought was inherent in his idea of Gram Swaraj. It is a matter of immense satisfaction that this festival sees participation from several grassroots innovators who have been inspired to find effective solutions to problems that they experienced in their communities."
