On the 13th of June, the Ministry of Railways started their new initiative. It is called Railway Innovation Policy— ‘Start-ups for Railways’. This programme is set to have a yearly pocket of around Rs. 50 crores. This programme has been set up so that the ministry can inject money into the start-ups based in the country that are involved in solving the problems Indian railways are going through right now.
Under the scheme, a maximum funding of Rs. 1.5 crores will be sent to the start-up company with the companies gaining more money for every land mark they are able to hit.
The Indian Railways will hand pick the companies and test their work out on a pilot basis and see if it is able to alleviate the issues they face and get the job done effectively. The ministry will the provide the appropriate funding depending on the success of the pilot and how much the company would need to scale up their operations.
Irrespective of the funding being done by the ministry, the intangible assets such as their intellectual property rights will stay with the start-up company or the person or group who came up with it.
The ministry also announced that they plan to branch out their funding soon for the ministry’s managers so that they are incentivised and motivated to find efficient solutions that plague the industry and other railway managers from across the country.
The point of these incentives is not so that the ministry can find solutions, but they also have to innovative, economical, easy to scale up and grow, and easy to introduce irrespective of environment.
There are a few issues the ministry faces and they have pin pointed them which includes a detection program for broken rails, rail stress monitors, a machine to clean up the tracks, a machine for a general inspection and so on.
The Indian railway system is the largest railway system in the continent and the 2n largest in the world that is run and operated by a single entity. This naturally makes it very difficult to make the trains run consistently on time and to keep them as efficient as possible.
However, the top brass of the ministry have assured the people that they will be working closely with the start-up companies will be giving them a helping hand and will give them the support they need to improve the railways of the country.
