Govt invites another round of applications for its chips to startups programme

The government has invited another round of applications from 100 more academic institutions, research and development (R&D) organisations, startups, micro, medium and small enterprises (MSMEs) from across the country for its chips to startups (C2s) programme. Applications are open till September 15.

In this round, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) will accept proposals for work in areas of energy and environment, healthcare, agriculture, disaster management, intelligent transport, system, emerging technology, safety and security as well as strategic projects, as per the official notification.

The chips to startup (C2S) program, started in January last year, aims to train 85,000 engineers in the field of very large-scale integration (VLSI) and embedded system design of semiconductors.

Apart from this, the C2S program also aims to give financial incentives to companies, startups, MSMEs as well as academic institutions working on projects which could lead to the development of 175 application-specific integrated circuits, working prototypes of 20 system on chips (SoC) and IP core repository by 2027.

In the first round, 103 institutions and startups, including the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Bombay, Roorkee and Dharwad, had been selected to work on projects such as global navigation receiver SoC for NAVIC and global position system (GSP), among several others.

The institutions and startups selected in the first round will not be eligible to apply for financial incentives in the second round, the IT ministry said in its notification.

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