Indian Railways, the National transporter has taken an important initiative in field of innovation through participation of start-ups and other entities. Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw has launched “StartUps for Railways” today in Rail Bhavan, New Delhi.

This policy will bring scale and efficiency in the field of operation, maintenance and infrastructure creation through participation of very large and untapped startup ecosystem.

Speaking at the event, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the long going discussions over integration of technology into Indian Railways have taken today the firm shape in form of this initiative launched today.

Expressing his happiness on launch of this initiative the Minister said that through this platform start ups will get a good opportunity to connect with Railways. Out of over 100 problem statements received from different divisions, field offices/zones of Railways, 11 problem statements like rail fracture, headway reduction etc. have been taken up for phase 1 of this program. These will be presented before the start ups to find innovative solutions.

Railway Minister requested the startups to use this opportunity and ensured them of support from Indian Railways in form of 50 percent capital grant, assured market, scale and ecosystem

Salient details of Indian Railway Innovation Policy are as under:-

•  Grant up to Rs. 1.5 Crore to innovator on equal sharing basis with provision of milestone-wise payment.
• Complete process from floating of problem statement to development of prototype is online with defined time line to make it transparent and objective.
• Trials of prototypes will be done in Railways. Enhanced funding will be provided to scale up deployment on successful performance of prototypes.
•  Selection of Innovator/s will be done by a transparent and fair system which will be dealt through online portal inaugurated today by Minister of Railways.
•  Developed Intellectual property rights (IPR) will remain with innovator only.
•  Assured developmental order to innovator.
•  De-centralization of complete product development process at divisional level to avoid delays.

In the month of May, field units were asked to provide Problem Areas. In response to it, around 160 problem statements have been received till date. To start with, 11 problems statements have been identified to deal via new Innovation Policy and uploaded on the portal.

i. Broken Rail Detection System

ii. Rail Stress Monitoring System

iii. Headway Improvement System for suburban section interoperable with Indian Railways National ATP system

iv. Automation of Track Inspection Activities

v. Design of superior Elastomeric Pad (EM Pad) for Heavy Haul freight Wagons

vi. Development of on-line Condition Monitoring System for traction motors of 3-phase Electric Locomotives

vii. Light-weight wagon for transporting commodities like Salt

viii. Development of analytical tool by using digital data for improving passenger services

ix. Track Cleaning Machine

x. App for post-training revision & self-service refresher courses

xi. Use of Remote Sensing, Geomatics and GIS for bridge inspection

More Problems Statements have been collected from Railways, which are under scrutiny and shall be uploaded in phased manner.

Indian Railway Innovation Portal has been launched which is available on web address www.innovation.indianrailways.gov.in

RKJ/M