New Delhi: Cornext Agriproducts of Hyderabad, Robotguru Education Technologied of Mysore, Aloe Well of Lucknow, and Nava Design Innovation of Kochi have own National Startup Awards2020.

The Results of the National Startup Awards 2020 were released by minister of railways and commerce & industry Piyush Goyal here on Tuesday. The virtual felicitation ceremony was held in the august presence of minister of state for commerce & industry Som Parkash.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has conceived the National Startup Awards to recognize and reward outstanding Startups and ecosystem enablers that are building innovative products or solutions and scalable enterprises, with high potential of employment generation or wealth creation, demonstrating measurable social impact. The measure of success is not only the financial gains for the investors, but also the contribution to social good.

The first edition of the Awards invited applications across 12 sectors, which were further sub-classified into a total of 35 categories. These 12 sectors are Agriculture, Education, Enterprise Technology, Energy, Finance, Food, Health, Industry 4.0, Space, Security, Tourism and Urban Services. Apart from these, startups are to be selected from those which create impact in rural areas, are women-led and founded in academic campuses.

A total of 1641 applications were received from startups spread across 23 States and 4 Union Territories. These applicants included 654 Women-led, 165 academic institution based and 331 startups working in rural areas.

A total of 31 applications were received from Incubators and 10 applications were received from Accelerators. Nine incubators and 5 Accelerators were selected after three rounds of evaluation for presentation before jury panel.

Congratulating the winners, minister Piyush Goyal said that the awards will generate excitement and enthusiasm among the young entrepreneurs in taking their innovative ideas to the higher level.  He said some of them will become the future unicorns and success stories of India which the world will see and recognise.  This will propel the startups to expand and serve new geographies and large number of people, the minister added.

Speaking on the occasion, MoS for commerce and industry Som Parkash said that the Startup mission, started by the prime minister in 2016, has expanded to every nook and corner of the country. There is at least one startup in 586 districts of the country. The startups are generating employment. He said that the incentives and facilities provided by the government are helping the budding entrepreneurs and bringing out talent and skills.