The Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiative of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was in the spotlight of the Defexpo, with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurating Manthan 2022, an event organised by Innovations for Defence Excellence-Defence Innovation Organisation (iDEX-DIO).
Speaking at the event, the Minister said that the MoD had approved more than INR 300 crore for over 100 iDEX winners in these past few years to develop products/technologies in more than 50 technological areas.
“In the last 7-8 years, there has been a change in the consciousness of the nation, with greater focus on solutions and goals. Earlier, it was difficult for the youth to contribute in various fields, but initiatives such as iDEX have empowered our young entrepreneurs and given them wings to fly. iDEX, a major imitative towards making India self-reliant, is a platform to provide economic support to entrepreneurs to develop state-of-the-art technologies,” he said.
During the Manthan event, it was announced that the results for 75 challenges under DISC 7 (SPRINT) and PRIME (SPRINT) were announced in a record time of under two months; 118 winners across 75 challenges were announced by iDEX – DIO, with the winners of DISC 6, DISC 7 SPRINT, OC 4 & OC 5 being felicitated.
Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari, Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral R Hari Kumar, Chief of the Army Staff General Manoj Pande and other senior officials from the Central and State Governments as well as industry representatives were present at the event.
iDEX was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during DefExpo 2018 and received the Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Public Administration last year, achieving new heights of success since its launch.
Over 6,000 applications have been received since the inception of iDEX over the last seven editions of the Defence India Start-up Challenge and Open Challenge. The MoD is now promoting iDEX Prime which was launched to provide Grant-in-Aid support worth up to INR 10 crore.
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