Why in News?

• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) including Self-Employment and Talent Utilization (SETU) is Government of India’s endeavour to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Its objective is to serve as a platform for promotion of world-class Innovation Hubs, Grand Challenges, Start-up businesses and other self-employment activities, particularly in technology driven areas.
• The Mission has been set up under NITI Aayog

Functions of AIM:

• Entrepreneurship promotion through Self-Employment and Talent Utilization, wherein innovators would be supported and mentored to become successful entrepreneurs
• Innovation promotion: to provide a platform where innovative ideas are generated :
• Atal Tinkering Labs
• Atal Incubation Centers
• Scale-up support to Established Incubators

Atal Tinkering Labs:

• The objective of establishing AIM is to create scientific temper and cultivate the spirit of curiosity and innovation among young minds.
• In Schools, AIM facilitates to set up network of Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL).
• The vision of Atal Tinkering Lab initiative is to ‘Cultivate 1 Million children in India as Neoteric Innovators’. The objective of this scheme is to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination in young minds and inculcate skills such as design mind-set, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing, rapid calculations, measurements etc.