Govt, industry should help startups, says Ratan Tata

New Delhi: The government and the industry should share responsibility for creating an environment that fosters innovators and helps them take ideas to the market, eminent industrialist Ratan Tata said today.

"I believe responsibility of private sector is as much to encourage these innovations because it is outside sphere of a normal banking arrangement to see innovation being funded and so I believe under the auspices of the President and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) are looking at very important moment in our history," Tata said.

Tata was speaking at a round-table on start-ups, incubation and financing innovations at the Rashtrapati Bhavan today. The government and the industry should share responsibility for creating an environment in the country that
fosters and recognises innovators and helps them take ideas to the market, Tata said.

"It is great privilege and great honour to be here today as someone who is been in the start-up and the ... innovation sector and to be aware that today at the highest level in the country, we are receiving the kind of attention that we should
have received many many years ago," Tata said at the concluding day of the 'Festival of Innovations'.

Tata said start-ups and innovation are recent terms which connote enormous profits, billionaires but people often forget both innovation and start-ups have resulted in products and assistance for common good of man.

"India has been country which has created many innovators many of who have to go abroad to fulfil their dreams," Tata said. President Pranab Mukherjee also expressed concern over funding methodology for innovative start-ups and called for urgent need to rethink on design and structure of financial instruments to provide a fillip to grass root innovation movement.

Tata Trusts has joined the India Innovation Growth Programme along with the DST and aerospace company Lockheed Martin to focus on innovations addressing socio-economic challenges.

The IIGP is a public private partnership project that will invest in social and industrial innovations, train innovators in world class commercialisation strategies, offer support for incubation and assist in business development.

"I am very proud of initiative being done with Lockheed Martin," Tata, who is the chairman of Tata Trusts, said.