Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX)

Why in News?

• Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX), the flagship initiative of Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, has recently reached a milestone with the signing of its 150th contract.

Highlights

• iDEX, launched in 2018, is an ecosystem to foster innovation & technology development in Defence and Aerospace by engaging innovators & entrepreneurs to deliver technologically advanced solutions for modernizing the Indian Military.
• It provides funding/grants to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), start-ups, individual innovators, R&D institutes and academia to carry out research and development.
• The IDEX-Prime aims to support projects requiring support beyond Rs 1.5 crore up to Rs 10 crore, to help ever-growing start-ups in the defence sector.
• iDEX portal was launched to provide wider publicity and better visibility of iDEX activities and enable more efficient running of future challenges through better information management.
• iDEX is funded and managed by “Defence Innovation Organisation (DIO)
• iDEX has been awarded the prestigious Prime Minister Award for Public Policy in Innovation Category for the year 2021
• DISC aims at supporting Startups/MSMEs/Innovators to create prototypes and/or commercialize products/solutions in National Defence and Security.
• The First DISC was launched In 2018 at Bengaluru.
• It was launched by the Ministry of Defence in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission (AIM).
• AIM is Government of India’s flagship initiative to create and promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country.
• Under the program, the start-ups, Indian companies and individual innovators (including research & academic institutions) can participate.
• DISC 7 has been launched with 69 Problem Statements (PS) from Indian Navy for resolution by startups & innovators.