PM Modi Announces Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 4 launched the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge’ to support the local developers to make home-grown apps. Aatmanirbhar Bharat Innovation Challenge purposes at inspiring tech & startup groups to make world-class 'Made in India' Apps. In the challenge, developers are requested to develop apps in eight categories. The App innovation challenge has been announced in the combined partnership of the Ministry of Electronics &IT and Atal Innovation Mission-Niti Aayog.

PM Modi post a tweeted, said that "This challenge is for you if you have such a working product or if you feel you have the vision and expertise to create such products. I urge all my friends in the tech community to participate. Sharing my thoughts in my @LinkedIn post."

In PM Modi LinkedIn post, he wrote, "Nowadays, we are seeing huge interest and enthusiasm among the start-up and tech ecosystem to innovate, develop, and promote home-grown apps. Today, when the entire nation is working towards creating an Aatmanirbhar Bharat, it is a good opportunity to give direction to their efforts, momentum to their hard-work and mentorship to their talent to evolve Apps which can satisfy our market as well as compete with the world."

He wrote that this challenge would run in two tracks - promotion of existing apps and the development of new apps.

"Track-01 will work in mission mode for identifying good quality Apps for the leader-board and shall be completed in around a month. The track-02 initiative will work to help create new champions in India by providing support in ideation, incubation, prototyping and roll out along with market access," he wrote in the post.

The outcome of this challenge will be to give better visibility and clarity to existing Apps to achieve their goals, and to create tech products to find solutions to tech conundrums with the help of mentorship, tech support and guidance during the entire life-cycle, he wrote.

Prime Minister Modi in his post said that it is marvelous opportunity belong to these sectors for new apps that solve particular concerns for India and the world.

"Can we think of making traditional Indian games more popular via Apps? Can we develop Apps with targeted and smart access to the right age group for learning, gaming, etc.? Can we develop gaming apps for people in rehabilitation or getting counseling to help them in their journey? There are many such questions and technology alone can give answers in a creative manner," said PM Modi.

The reward money for apps is between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 20 lakh subject on the category. The app will be assessed on the basis of ease of use, robustness, security feature, and scalability.

The Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge is being announced in the following 8 broad categories: Office Productivity & Work from Home, Social Networking, E-Learning, Entertainment, Health & Wellness, Business including Agritech and Fintech, News, Games.

There may be numerous subcategories within each category.

The decision of launching the App innovation challenge can be seen in the light of recent India’s ban on 59 Chinese Apps which included famous apps such as UC Browser and TikTok.

The App Innovation Challenge is a step forward not only towards a Digitalized India but also the one which is self-sufficient in sustaining itself in all the areas.

All information on the challenge will be available on “innovate.mygov.in’’. The last date of submission is July 18, 2020.