Entrepreneuship Development and Innovation institute (EDII), MSME department, Government of Tamil Nadu today entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with city-based FORGE to plan,finance, operate and manage a five-year strategic programme called StartupActivation and Acceleration Program (SAAP).

This state-level program is aimed at discovering, nurturing, and funding innovative ideas that have the potential to become innovative products and successful enterprises, EDII Additional Director Sanjevana told reporters here today.In order to activate a strong pipeline of innovative ideas that aim to solve the most pressing problems faced by consumers, citizens, government, industry and plant, EDII and Forge launched the Tamil Nadu Student Innovators (TNSI2017) to seed the next generation of breakthrough ideas that apply the power of technology to offer innovative solutions, she said.

TNSI program has been operational for the past six months beginning with a massive campaign for outreach and awareness covering 12 cities over 100 institutions, she said.In the process the programme has engaged over 5,000 students in higher technical and engineering education, Sanjeevana said.

On the programme, Co-founder and CEO Forge Accelerator Vishawanathan Sahasranam said that over 700 innovative ideas from students were registered and shortlisted 36 ideas. The juries selected top six ideas, who are offered admission to the Forge Fellows programme, a full time residential pre-incubation program that support prototyping of innovative ideas with infra, mentoring and grant of Rs.five lakh,he said.