6940 entries received in PM's Mobile App innovation Challenge, the challenge was designed to give a push to indigenous Mobile apps that may replace the 59 banned Chinese Apps

India to incentivize IT Entrepreneurs, to develop indigenous Mobile apps that may replace the 59 banned Chinese Apps

BY Vijay Thakur, Special Representative, The Statesman, vijaythakurx@gmail.com 

Prime Minister’s Made in India Mobile app challenge received a record number of 6940 entries across the 8 categories.

According to the Government, 3939 applications have come from individuals and 3001 from organizations and companies.

Individual applicants have offer 1757 ready to use applications while the remaining 2182 are under development. In the organization, category 1742 Apps are ready to use while the remaining 1259 are under development.

The Category-wise breakup of the Apps submitted include

1142 under Business

901 under Health & Wellness

1062 under E-Learning

1155 under Social Networking

326 under Games

662 under Office & Work from Home

237 under News

320 under Entertainment.

Around 1135 Apps have been submitted under the others category.

While Around 271 of these Apps have more than 100,000 downloads with 89 of the Apps having million-plus downloads. The applicants are from all over the country including remote and small towns.

 The government claimed that the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App ecosystem has the potential to unlock value for the Indian tech startups and help them get a pie of the multi-trillion-dollar App Economy. Just the top 3 companies with maximum downloads of Apps, this year have a total market cap of almost 2 trillion $s and are growing very fast.

My Earlier Post on this subject

The move is good, intentions are honest but the reward is just an eyewash. Government is offering only Rs 20 lakhs price for each category (total categories are 8); Rs 15 lakhs second Price and Rs 10 lakhs for the third price.

Which means there would be a total of 8 First price, 8 Second price, 8 third price. The government would spend Rs 1.6 crore for the first prices, Rs 1.2 crores for the second price and Rs 80 lakhs for the third price 

A total of Rs 3.6 crore--it may seem sufficient for acknowledging their efforts and promote genuine apps. But 'ऊंट के मुंह में जीरा ' when we see the hard work involved in it. It would not meet even 10 days salary of the engineers who are spending day and night on the app. Too many mobile innovators, it is like खोदा पहाड़ निकला चूहा? 

In a big move to promote Indian IT entrepreneurs, Niti Ayog has offered help, prize and other incentives to IT professionals, who are developing or have already developed innovative Indian apps that may replace Chinese apps or are or world quality in the field of ‘office productivity and Work from Home, ‘Social Networking’, E-Learning, Entertainment, Health and Wellness app, News app and apps related to Business.

On Saturday India offered help to promote best Indian apps and launched ‘App Innovation Challenge’ for IT companies which are making mobile app to improve ‘office productivity and Work from Home, ‘Social Networking’, E-Learning, Entertainment, Health and Wellness app, News app and apps related to Business.

 

The objective of the project is to support and build a strong ecosystem for Indian Apps. For this Niti Aayog has launched a Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge for Indian tech entrepreneurs and Startups. This would have two tracks, one for the promotion of existing apps and second for those who are developing new apps—indigenous version of Chinese apps. 

In track one, Ayog has initiated the App Innovation Challenge to identify the best Indian Apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world-class Apps in their respective categories. This Innovation Challenge will have various cash awards and incentives of featuring Apps. It would create an ecosystem where Indian entrepreneurs and Startups are incentivised to ideate, incubate, build, nurture and sustain Tech solutions that can serve not only citizens within India but also the world.

 

In track two of the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge, The government would seek to identify Indian startups, entrepreneurs, and companies to encourage them with ideation, incubation, prototyping and roll out of applications. While track 1 would be over in a month, the track 2 would run for a longer course of time—the government is working on details of the track 2. 

BACKGROUND

MeitY in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission – Niti Aayog launches Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge to identify the best Indian Apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world-class Apps in their respective categories. This Innovation Challenge with various cash awards and incentives of featuring Apps on Leader Boards seeks to create an ecosystem where Indian entrepreneurs and Startups are incentivised to ideate, incubate, build, nurture and sustain Tech solutions that can serve not only citizens within India but also the world.

The Mantra is to Make in India for India and the World.

The AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge is being launched in the following 8 broad categories:

• Office Productivity & Work from Home
• Social Networking
• E-Learning
• Entertainment
• Health & Wellness
• Business including Agritech and Fintech
• News
• Games

There may be several subcategories within each category.

LIST OF SUB CATEGORIES AND PROBLEM TESTS (INDICATIVE AND NOT LIMITED TO)

• A mobile application harnessing the most accurate facial and/or body mapping technology to allow for a true-to-life virtual try out of products like spectacles, clothes, etc.
• Mobile application for real-time speech-to-speech translation and camera translation of multiple languages.
• An automated web-based application that handles the business-to-business lead generation and cold emailing and is completely manageable from a mobile device itself.
• Application to use mobile devices as image scanners with features like on the fly image correction, image editing, text recognition, etc.
• Application to provide cloud storage integration, cross-platform file transfer via FTP or LAN, and a root browser on a mobile device
• Robust indigenous anti-virus software for mobile devices.
• Application to optimize mobile device's performance by cleaning junk/cache files, optimizing device memory and optimizing battery usage.
• A mobile-based live streaming platform for hosting webinars, lectures, etc.
• A mobile-based messaging and video calling application
• A mobile-based microblogging application
• A mobile-based news application that uses cutting-edge technology to recommend the most relevant and interesting news individually to each use.
• A mobile application offering satellite imagery and street maps, as well as functions such as a route planner for travelling by foot, car, or with public transportation.
• A mobile-based online gaming platform which also functions as a social hub for gamers
• A mobile-based photo-editing application with all standard image editing features

Vijay Thakur, Special Representative, The statesman