Government Rolls Out Chunauti Contest To Support Startups From Small Cities

In a bid to promote startups and software product firms especially from small cities, the centre on Friday launched "Chunauti' contest. Under the scheme, Chunauti- Next Generation Startup Challenge Contest, as many as 300 startups working in specific domains will be chosen and offered seed funding of up to Rs. 25 lakh together with additional backing.

Government Rolls Out Chunauti Contest To Support Startups From Small Cities

The domains that shall be considered under the contest include agri-tech and fin-tech solutions; supply chain, logistics and transportation management and infrastructure and remote monitoring. Besides start-ups working in the area of medical healthcare, diagnostic, preventive and psychological care; jobs & skilling, linguistic tools & technologies shall also be identified.

The government in a release said, the start-ups identified as part of the Chunauti contest shall be provided with incubation facilities, security, testing facilities, mentorship, venture capital funding, industry networking in addition to consultations in various work areas such as IPR, HR and legal matters.

"Besides seed fund of upto Rs. 25 Lakh, the startups will also be provided cloud credits from leading cloud service providers. Start-ups who are in the ideation stage may be selected under the pre-incubation programme & mentored for up-to six months to evolve their business plan & solution around the proposed idea." Further startups in the phase of pre-incubation shall be given Rs. 10000 monthly for 6 months period.

The contest rolled out by union minister for electronics and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad entails a budget of Rs. 95 crore for three year period. This contest comes close on the heels of the government's other programme that aimed at promoting homegrown video conferencing platform, mobile app and chip companies.

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