The finale stage of the Smart India Hackathon – Hardware edition set the stage for an entrepreneurship-based announcement by Dharmendra Pratap Yadav, Secretary, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Department (MSME) , Government of Tamil Nadu.

The announcement came regarding the state’s new startup policy, the “innovation voucher scheme,” which has been planned by the state government.

The event, which was the third stage of the hackathon, was held at the Forge Accelerator in Tamil Nadu, one of ten locations of the event nationwide.

“We want to create a support system where we can help young entrepreneurs develop and fine-tune their idea better, help them raise capital, guide them through the production process and finally marketing it,” Yadav said, as reported by Times of India. “All this is critical to help them succeed. This assistance will be offered by the MSME department when they come to register themselves.”

The new policy will take effect in the next three months, according to Yadav, and will be prepared to support and encourage young entrepreneurship.

As part of the policy, Rs 20 crore has been set aside by the state government to provide as credit to selected startups, each of whom would receive between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 4 lakh.

The theme of the hackathon finale was “import substitution”, where 9 teams worked to come up with logistic-based solutions.

“We have so far tied up with 300 engineering colleges, so they can recommend some of their promising students and their ideas to the government,” Yadav said. “We want to include another 150 colleges. This will be the government’s way of setting up a state-supported incubation hub.”

After 120 hours, the overall winner of the hardware edition of the hackathon was a form of technology to assist with dyslexia. Other products from the event include an electronic detection machine and hearing aid-based headphones.

(Picture courtesy: https://www.realentrepreneur.co/)