The ‘National Innovation and Start-up Policy 2019 for students and faculty in HEIs was launched by Former Minister of Education, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on 11th September 2019 at AICTE, New Delhi.
This policy intends to guide HEIs for promoting students’ driven innovations & start-ups and to engage the students and faculty in innovation and start up activities in campus. The policy aims at enabling HEIs to build, streamline and strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in campus and will be instrumental in leveraging the potential of student’s creative problem solving and entrepreneurial mind-set, and promoting a strong intra and inter institutional partnerships with ecosystem enablers and different stakeholders at regional, national and international level. The policy is being implemented by MoE’s Innovation Cell and in coordination AICTE, UGC, state/ UT governments and universities. Implementation of policy has been undertaken for quick adoption by HEIs. The present policy is a way forward to the earlier version of AICTE’s Start-up Policy which was launched in the year 2016 to complement the Startup Action Plan under the Startup India and Stand-up India Program launched by Hon’ble Prime Minster of India.
Components of Guiding Framework
The National Innovation and Startup Policy laid down guiding framework for HEIs and it highlights various important and practical aspects of promoting and supporting innovation, technology commercialization and startups in academic setup as mentioned below :
• HEIs Strategies & Governance for Promoting Innovation & Entrepreneurship
• Creating Innovation Pipeline and Pathways for Entrepreneurs
• Building Organizational Capacity, Human Resources and Incentives to support and promote innovative and entrepreneurial activities
• Collaboration, Co-creation, Business Relationship and Knowledge Exchange within campus and among the ecosystem enablers co-exist at regional and national level
• Norms for Faculty & Students Driven Innovations and Startups
• Incentivizing Students for Entrepreneurship and Startup pursuits
• Incentivizing faculty and Staff for Entrepreneurship and Startup pursuits
• Incubation & Pre-incubation support and facility creation in HEIs
• IP ownership rights for technologies Development and transfer in HEIs
• Pedagogy and Learning Interventions for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development
• Entrepreneurial Performance Impact Assessment
NISP Implementation Plan
The NISP implementation team at MoE’s Innovation Cell has designed a five-stage implementation plan to take the NISP to ground. A portal in this regard has been in place to accommodate below implementation phases with proper progress monitoring and evaluation mechanism.
Stage 1 : Launch of NISP Campaign to bring HEIs to a common platform and commitment to adopt the NISP in institutes in a time bound manner.
Stage 2 : Inviting Nomination of Sr. Faculty from HEI to Implement I&E Policy at Institute Level.
Stage 3 : Phase wise conduct of Orientation cum Training Programs for the nominated faculty in policy design and implementation and offering further handholding in implementation.
Stage 4 : Implementation progress monitoring and program evaluation and corrective actions
Stage 5 : Incorporation of changes and improvement in existing policy, consensus building and further implementation.
National Innovation & Entrepreneurship Policy 
National Innovation & Startup Policy (NISP) Committee Members