Chintan Vaishnav On Atal Innovation Mission
How is India developing its #startup ecosystem under the Atal Innovation Mission?
George Skaria finds out from Mission Director Chintan Vaishav. #BQLive
George Skaria finds out from Mission Director Chintan Vaishav. #BQLive
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00:00 Welcome to BQ Prime, Dr. Chintan Vaishnav, who is our guest today.
00:08 He is the Mission Director for the Atal Innovation Mission at NITI Aayog and is on leave from
00:16 on deputation from MIT Sloan School of Management.
00:20 Thank you for joining us.
00:23 You've been here for about two and a half years or so at the Atal Innovation Mission.
00:28 What have been the key achievements that you've had and what have been the main challenges?
00:36 So I feel that I think the first thing to appreciate is that building of vibrant national
00:51 innovation ecosystems is a 30-40 year journey, as we know from most nations that have gone
01:02 before us in doing this kind of work.
01:07 So in that sense, I think if I were to look back at my own two and a half years, first
01:15 of all, I think India has been at this journey of building a startup ecosystem for the country
01:27 in a serious way since maybe 2016 when Startup India Atal Innovation Mission were formed.
01:35 There were efforts before that through DST, DBT, etc., which created some energy.
01:45 But now a lot more focus was given to it.
01:50 And my work in the last two and a half years has been to land the first phase of establishing
02:03 Atal Innovation Mission on a solid, serious footing.
02:10 When I joined, there were 6,000 Atal Tinkering Labs, now there are 10,000.
02:15 That was our mandate.
02:16 When I joined, there were 68 incubators.
02:19 There will soon be 100.
02:21 We have selected them.
02:22 We are establishing them.
02:25 That's our mandate, 101, actually.
02:29 Our mandate is to create 50 Atal community innovation centers.
02:35 We have 14 now.
02:36 We would finish 50 this year.
02:39 And the fourth piece of our mandate was to have 200 Atal New India Challenges run.
02:46 We would finish that also.
02:48 So in some sense, at one level, delivering on everything that was given to us was one
02:59 thing that we have ensured.
03:03 In the process, many of these initiatives have gained significant momentum and also
03:15 built a brand of sorts.
03:17 Atal Tinkering Labs, for example, is the world's largest program of its kind in terms of its
03:24 scale, the 10,000.
03:25 What is a tinkering lab?
03:26 A tinkering lab is a maker space.
03:31 It's a space where someone can build an artifact which may be their imagination when they came
03:41 in.
03:42 So, these labs have digital fabrication tools like the 3D printers, vinyl cutters, laser
03:52 cutter, mechanical desk, electronic desk.
03:57 And these are built in our context, they are built in schools where for 6th to 12th grade
04:07 students.
04:09 And there we provide three things, making as a skill, design thinking, and entrepreneurship
04:19 as a skill.
04:20 And in some ways, in a very simple sense, this is where somebody who would otherwise
04:27 have been a consumer begins to become a producer of sorts.
04:33 So it's a very profound shift in a way.
04:37 Can you run through the seven initiatives that you have quickly in sort of layman's
04:42 words so that some of them are little technical or technology based.
04:47 Can you simplify some of these initiatives?
04:50 Yeah, sure.
04:51 So Atal Tinkering Labs that we were talking about that is at the youngest age spectrum,
04:59 in the age spectrum.
05:01 These are maker spaces in schools.
05:04 Here ideas can become products.
05:07 That is one way to think about it.
05:09 The second initiative we have is Atal Incubation Centers.
05:15 These are typically centers in higher educational institutions, industry bodies, where ideas
05:25 can become startups.
05:28 So there people who come in with ideas are given, provided different services like, you
05:37 know, helping them build products, build a business model around it, provide mentorship,
05:45 connect them to investors, you know, it's a space where people can fail safely.
05:54 The third initiative is Community Innovation Centers.
06:00 The main reason for this initiative is that there's a lot of regional imbalance.
06:06 The large cities Bangalore, Gurugram, Hyderabad, etc.
06:12 There building startups, entrepreneurship is easier.
06:19 But as you go to tier two, tier three towns, it becomes harder.
06:24 We're trying to build that bridge that gap by building centers that are community facing.
06:30 If you travel through India, you will see that you will always meet community level
06:35 champions, very innovative people.
06:37 There's no platform to support them.
06:38 This is a platform that hopes to support them.
06:42 Fourth initiative is the Atal New India Challenge.
06:46 Here, ministries give us problem statements.
06:50 And we run national challenges.
06:52 We select startups that address those challenges, support them over a year and a half to two
06:58 years with a crore, crore and a half rupees to bring them to markets.
07:04 Because the problem statement has come from the ministry, typically it is a problem where
07:09 market, that is market is not solving that problem.
07:12 Can you give an example?
07:14 So for example, you know, in many of our cities, you know that the sewers are cleaned by human
07:26 beings, the conservative, what we call the conservancy workers.
07:32 Every year there are some deaths because of the methane poisoning when somebody enters
07:38 a manhole.
07:40 This is something that should be automated.
07:44 It is not a problem that market is solving on its own.
07:48 We are running a challenge to solve it.
07:51 That's one example.
07:52 For example, the other thing is India, for instance, has 14 or more types of millets.
07:59 But if you look at post processing of millets, there's only one or two types of machines
08:04 that process it.
08:06 Although we need a lot of customization there, that's a type of a challenge that we run,
08:11 for example.
08:12 When you say challenge, what do you mean?
08:15 It's like a contest or something?
08:17 It's a contest.
08:18 We put out a problem statement and we invite those innovators who may have proved something
08:27 in the lab or who may have even a small customer base, but they want to scale their solution
08:40 that addresses this challenge.
08:44 We invite all such applications.
08:45 There's an independent jury that looks through it and says, here are a few that we should
08:51 support and we support them.
08:55 So that's the fourth.
08:56 How do you take them to the market?
08:58 For example, you have found solutions.
09:01 What has been your experience in taking them to the market?
09:04 Yes.
09:05 So, generally there are three stages, if you think about it simplistically.
09:12 First is have you proved something in a lab that it works?
09:18 Second is have you proved something in the market where it not only works, but some people
09:24 are willing to buy it and you are able to service it and maintain it and so on for them.
09:30 So in some ways it is a beginning to look like a full business.
09:36 And the third is are you able to scale it?
09:39 We generally pick up these problems at the level of have you proved it in the lab?
09:47 And then we give them the tools, we give them hand holding support.
09:51 Generally what we do is we associate them with the Atal incubation centres whose job
09:58 is to anyway take such ideas forward.
10:01 They provide them the hand holding to demonstrate it in the market.
10:05 Once they have demonstrated it, then we also organise venues where they can show it to
10:15 their potential customers.
10:16 They can show it to the ministries who submitted the problem in the first place.
10:21 So maybe they will earn a pilot or so with the ministry.
10:24 So that initial push is given to them.
10:29 And by then generally what happens, we sort of in some ways around each idea we build
10:34 a ecosystem, a mini micro ecosystem that helps them.
10:40 And generally what happens is that most successful ideas by then find their connections and they
10:48 gain momentum and they do not need us anymore and that is a good thing.
10:54 So that but the challenge is our fourth piece.
10:58 The fifth is Mentor India Programme where we have enlisted a large number of professionals
11:05 from various walks of life to connect them to students, to schools, to start-ups who
11:15 can mentor them and take them forward.
11:23 Generally I think one of the things that such a mentor does is it just brings a very different
11:27 worldview to these people.
11:31 So that is our fifth programme.
11:33 Who are some of the well-known mentors that you have?
11:38 So I think there we have a, every year we do a mentor of change celebration where mentors
11:47 are celebrated as recommended by their mentees.
11:55 But some of the mentors have gone on to give us some really incredible things.
11:59 So for instance in Bangalore there is Kiran Kumar.
12:04 This is Kiran Kumar who was in as such in the industrial sector of Bangalore like IT
12:13 sector but he has given us what we now run is a Tinkerpreneur Marathon every year where
12:24 we run a four to five month programme.
12:27 In fact this afternoon there is the announcement of the first set of the top winners of the
12:35 first cut that people will make and where we give some themes along which students go
12:44 and look for problems and they pick a problem and then apply design thinking and come up
12:49 with a solution.
12:50 This year's themes for example were the G20 themes you know and so on.
12:56 But this format came from a mentor who tried it in their school and they said this works
13:02 and we should do it nationwide and we do it nationwide today.
13:07 Similarly when COVID time hit us and we could not have done a marathon in person.
13:20 These mentors were the ones who said that we should build a box.
13:24 We called it the unbox tinkering that students can take home and do tinkering or we should
13:32 virtualize a lot of these services and so on.
13:35 So I think the most exciting thing about the mentor programme is that is the spirit of
13:46 giving back that you see in many of these mentors.
13:49 They work so hard and they do not receive anything in cash for something like this.
13:57 So it is very fascinating how much of that spirit exists, very inspiring.
14:05 One more programme, the sixth programme we have is it is recently named LIPI but it started
14:14 out as vernacular innovation programme, India's innovation ecosystem is traditionally is currently
14:22 open to only those who are comfortable with English.
14:28 But only about 11-12% of Indians really speak English and so we have this programme opens
14:38 up India's innovation ecosystem to all languages of India.
14:41 So all 22 official languages we teach design thinking, we are now working on providing
14:47 market access, investor access, policy access in people's languages because creativity
14:54 is nothing to do with language.
14:57 And then finally the seventh programme we have is the ecosystem development and partnership
15:01 programme.
15:02 We have over 50 partners about 40 or so domestic large companies trying to work in some or
15:10 the other part of the ecosystem, about 10+ are the international companies etc.
15:18 And they are plugged into you know bolstering different parts of our ecosystem.
15:25 So that is sort of the gamut we have done.
15:28 Despite all these very-very encouraging initiatives that we have, the global innovation index
15:34 recently ranked India at the 40th place which is same as the last year.
15:43 So where is the lag?
15:45 At one level there is a lot of work being done but on the other level we don't seem
15:50 to be making an impact on the ecosystem as far as the index is concerned.
15:57 So I think the index, there are 2-3 things to understand about it.
16:05 First is index is, our index rank is only as good as the data we can gather and submit
16:21 about our ecosystem.
16:22 So I think we have to improve the quality of the data that we submit, scale and scope
16:31 of that represents the scale and scope of our ecosystem.
16:35 That is one part.
16:37 The second part is there are many things that are happening in our ecosystem that are not
16:49 fully represented, captured in the GII.
16:58 For example, the tinkering labs we were talking about is the largest program of its kind.
17:05 If you think about the hunger for innovation, in our nation I think when people from overseas
17:15 come and go to these places and meet these young children, they really, one of the things
17:21 that I hear all the time from foreign leaders is that I wish this was there in my country
17:27 or I wish this was there when I was a student or you know.
17:32 And so I think similarly we have this whole movement of grassroots innovators, although
17:40 GII has now accommodated the idea of grassroots.
17:45 Again we have to submit the data of a very high quality for it to reflect in the index.
17:53 One final thing is that you know it will get harder and harder to maintain the rank and
18:01 move up because the competition now is stiffer.
18:07 Going from 81 to 40 is easier than going from 40 to 20.
18:13 Partly because you know imagine a race where there is the giraffe running and elephant
18:21 running and a cheetah running and etc.
18:24 We are an elephant that is trying to now going to have to run at the cheetah's pace.
18:32 And so I think that is what one will begin to see in terms of sort of maintaining and
18:43 moving up the rank.
18:44 The good news is that we have not moved down, but I think we have our work cut out.
18:52 You are also the head of the Startup 20 initiative under G20.
18:59 What have been the key learnings and innovations from there and how do you take that forward?
19:08 So the G20…
19:09 Especially with regard to India.
19:13 So I think one of the things that you were asking me earlier that what has changed since
19:19 I joined.
19:20 I think one dimension which has really picked up significantly is the international dimension.
19:31 We have not really strategically internationalized our ecosystem yet, but this is the time to
19:40 start doing it and I think Startup 20 is a precursor to this that moving in that direction.
19:50 I think the biggest change that Startup 20 has brought about or will bring about is in
20:01 the fact that G20 architecture itself is altered going forward.
20:08 Until now all of the business matters were being represented by B20, the Business 20
20:17 and going forward it will be represented by two groups.
20:19 The Business 20 will represent corporate issues of large corporations generally and Startup
20:27 20 will represent issues of startups and MSMEs.
20:31 So that is a big architectural shift.
20:36 What Startup 20 found were about five things.
20:46 First, these nations agreed to appealing to the world leaders to help increase the annual
20:57 funding in the global startup ecosystem to a trillion dollars a year which is about 2.5
21:02 to 3 times what it is on average today annually.
21:08 So that is a big sort of collective statement.
21:11 Of course, that will have to turn into a platform now that actually goes and advocates around
21:16 the world and really brings in that money.
21:24 We said that we will embrace the global frameworks when we started Startup 20.
21:29 The first thing we realized was that there was no common definition of startups across
21:34 the world for legacy reasons.
21:38 We also realized that we cannot impose a common definition but what we can do is we can provide
21:43 a definitional framework which allows us to understand each other's definition so that
21:50 we know what we are valuing, how to value this entity and so on.
21:56 And a governance framework which can be adopted globally for startups to be serious about
22:03 governance from the early stage not think of it as a sort of a afterthought.
22:09 So that is the second piece.
22:11 The third piece is to create access for startups to global money, markets, talent and so on.
22:28 And I think different parts of the world need different things.
22:30 There are many small countries which are very innovative but have no market of their own
22:34 for example.
22:35 There are many founders around the world who may want to do something advanced in AI or
22:40 ML or whatever.
22:41 They have no talent pool to access and so on and money of course everybody needs.
22:47 So that is the third piece.
22:50 Fourth is we set out to say how to build inclusive innovation ecosystems.
22:55 Again for underrepresented groups and communities what inclusion means to different countries
23:02 is different but there are many best practices to follow and we catalogued some.
23:07 So that is the fourth piece.
23:09 The fifth piece is to just create mechanisms where we can identify startups of global interest
23:16 and have a mechanism to scale it globally because if SDGs for example were to be addressed
23:21 we will need all innovations around the world to address them and can we create mechanisms
23:28 so we some guidance of that sort.
23:31 So all of these pieces are put out as a part of the policy communiqué by Startup20.
23:40 In India what it means is that at least immediately what we are hoping to do is to now package
23:47 all of that wisdom into offerings that our ecosystem can begin to offer.
23:55 You know it can begin to embrace a good governance framework.
23:59 It can begin to look global that many several incubators do that today but not all do that.
24:05 It begin to be conscious about looking global.
24:09 It can begin to emphasize inclusion much more so than they have so far.
24:17 It can begin to identify startups that are of global interest and bring it to Startup20
24:21 and say let us take this global and so on.
24:23 So these things will turn into services and so that is the next step.
24:31 But despite all the innovations and the startup activity that we have in the country there
24:39 is a problem of unemployment still moving.
24:42 So where does the cap, where is the cap?
24:46 Yeah, no that is right.
24:49 I mean there is a multi-dimensional, that is a multi-dimensional problem.
24:58 But I think if I were to sort of speak about it in the startup ecosystem parlance then
25:06 it is essentially a mismatch of job seekers to job creators if you would.
25:15 And obviously not everybody is going to be a job creator.
25:19 But I think if you look at historically what has happened is that until this point when
25:29 or last few years when we began to be serious about building a platform where innovation
25:36 and entrepreneurship can thrive there was not a single, there is no institution in our
25:47 context which promotes risk taking.
25:52 Families do not promote it, schools do not promote it, academia in general, governments
25:57 do not promote it, industry also is by and large risk averse.
26:04 And so it is only been the last few years that we are creating a platform for young
26:11 people to take risk.
26:14 And without taking that risk we will not create more job creators.
26:20 But that being said we are still only maybe one-tenth of the way when it comes to the
26:28 startup ecosystems journey.
26:29 Because today India has 100,000 startups, there are 140 crore people which means there
26:37 is one startup for 14,000 citizens.
26:41 If you look at startup nations like Israel there is one startup for 1400 citizens.
26:48 But they have been at it for 30-40 years, we have been at it for a shorter period.
26:56 But if you make an assumption that we will, we have as much brains as anybody else then
27:05 I think we will get there.
27:07 But it will take time and I think we are in the early stages.
27:10 If you look at the overall employment created by startups for example, in 100,000 startups
27:17 and one startup on average employs 10 to 11 people.
27:22 This is I am being generous but so 100,000 startups employ a million people.
27:32 That is around, that is probably smaller than the software industry at the moment.
27:42 So they have done job creation but it will take us much more effort for them to become
27:51 a serious integrated part of the economy.
28:00 The other thought that comes to me in this context is that is it a problem of globalization?
28:07 You spoke about internationalization of startups so therefore best practices come in terms
28:13 of valuation, in terms of attracting people etc.
28:19 But India as a country its priorities are at the grassroots level or at employment creation
28:26 level.
28:27 Is there a mismatch between the practices of global nature, natured startups and our
28:39 own problems?
28:42 So we have always had to, we have always had to be a nation that runs in two gears simultaneously.
28:55 Of course our own challenges of you know in equity and you know job creation and all of
29:03 that are there.
29:06 But at the same time we have always had global aspirations and there is definitely a segment
29:12 that is in a way global in their experience, outlook, capability etc.
29:20 So I think even in the startup world you see that in areas like e-commerce and fintech
29:32 and so on.
29:33 I think our firms are far more global, their outlook is global, the way they are structured
29:45 is global, all of that.
29:49 On the many other fronts where we have to address our own opportunities and challenges
30:00 you know agriculture, water, housing, energy, environment etc.
30:08 There I think there is something very interesting happening.
30:15 One is many of our people, their context is the local problems so that is where they start.
30:26 But then soon they realize that this is actually a global problem and the solutions they arrive
30:32 at are typically very affordable solutions because that is the context they are addressing
30:38 and the world needs that same solution but unless you have thought about it from the
30:50 perspective of being global from the get-go, you may not have structured yourself as such.
30:58 That is the piece we are trying to change for example through something like Startup20
31:03 because there is no as a thought experiment there is nothing preventing you from thinking
31:06 global even if you are addressing the local problem.
31:11 One final question, you have graduated in Indian classical music, has that helped you
31:18 as a practitioner of innovation because that is essentially creativity?
31:24 That is a very good question.
31:27 Yes it has helped me in a couple of ways I can say from reflection.
31:37 First classical music or ours has a, it keeps you movable from the inside.
31:56 For example you know when I walk into a room and there is a Hirvahara being played raga,
32:06 I have a very, it transforms my mood to a happy morning mood because of this training
32:14 or if I walk into a room and Darbari is being played and it transcends me into a very somber
32:24 serious mood and that ability to be moved instantly is something that I attribute to
32:37 my training in arts and I think because empathy is so fundamental to innovation that training
32:45 I feel helps with empathy.
32:48 The other piece that I have realized is also that because I can think in music there are
32:56 many times the problems when I translate it into the musical paradigm to understand the
33:03 problem.
33:04 A lot of times people will say oh you can't have structure and creativity at the same
33:09 time.
33:10 Why can't you have it?
33:11 Our ragas have always had structure and yet creativity and so these metaphors are in some
33:18 ways being able to use these metaphors interchangeably is something that's helpful because of musical
33:27 training.
33:28 Thank you Dr. Chintan.
33:29 Thank you so much.
33:30 [Music]