Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Member (S&T), NITI Aayog
The ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) Fund has seen a tremendous response with the Technology Development Board committing around ₹2,000 crore, its entire allocation, to 22 selected start-ups, and the selection of Second Level Fund Managers to be completed by end of this month, Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Member(S&T), NITI Aayog, told businessline in a chat. Karandikar also spoke about the strategic rollout of the new Prime Minister Research Chair Scheme, which will offer high-value research grants to attract top-tier global scientific talent to Indian R&D labs and select higher education institutions. On sovereign AI, the technocrat said that Sarvam AI, BharatGen, and other indigenous models are all scaling, and in the next six months to one year, there will be more push and differentiation in these models, improving their adoption.Edited excerpts:
What is the status of the deployment of the ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund?
We are in the process of selecting the Second Level Fund Managers. The Technology Development Board (TDB) and BIRAC were already nominated as SLFMs. The TDB already issued a call for proposals and has seen an overwhelming response. It has selected 22 start-ups, and the total commitment of these 22 start-ups has been about Rs 2000 crore, which is the entire fund allocated to TDB and that is already exhausted. Now, they have asked for additional funding from the RDI Fund. We have also received about 150 applications for the selection of SLFMs, and by the end of July, I think the alternate investment funds will also be onboarded from this.
