Defence India Startup Challenge: 1st of its kind! iDEX4Fauji initiative launched to encourage innovation among soldiers

In a major development, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh has launched the Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC 4) during the iDEX event, featuring the initiatives aimed at expanding the horizons of Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) ecosystem. iDEX4Fauji initiative and Product Management Approach (PMA) guidelines were also launched by the Raksha Mantri during the event.  Each of these initiatives is expected to facilitate iDEX-DIO to scale up the program qualitatively and quantitatively.

iDEX4Fauji

- iDEX4Fauji is a first of its kind initiative, launched to support innovations identified by members of the Indian Armed Forces and will bolster frugal innovation ideas from soldiers/ field formations.

- There are more than 13 Lakh service personnel working in the field and on borders, handling extreme conditions and equipment and would be having many ideas and innovations to improve such equipment.

- There was no mechanism to support such innovations.

- iDEX4Fauji would open this window and allow our Faujis to become part of the innovation process and get recognised and rewarded.

This IDEX4Fauji initiative will bolster frugal innovative ideas from soldiers and help to revolutionise the future of our Armed Forces.

Our soldier would not only have a thorough understanding of their own requirements but also have necessary support of innovators & Startups.

— Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) September 29, 2020

- Services Headquarters will provide support to the soldiers and field formations all over the country to ensure maximum participation.

Under Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC) 4, eleven challenges from Armed forces, OFB&DPSUs were thrown open to prospective startups, innovators, MSMEs alike to provide their innovative ideas on technologies which find their application in the defence sector. The challenges are as follows:

Today’s launch of DISC 4 is indicative of the faith our Armed Forces have, in the @India_iDEX Startup ecosystem and reinforces the support to our soldiers while they co-innovate and co-create innovative Products with support of the Startups.

— Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) September 29, 2020

Besides the DISC-4 Challenges, I am glad to announce another unique initiative of DIO to connect entrepreneurs with the grassroot level innovators safeguarding our borders, called iDEX 4 Fauji. pic.twitter.com/dhZSBkojlf

— Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) September 29, 2020

1 Autonomous Underwater Swarm Drones
2 Predictive, Preventive & Prescriptive Machine Monitoring
3 Super Resolution for Improving Spatial Resolution
4 AI based Satellite Image Analysis
5 Prediction and forecasting of atmospheric visibility
6 Computer Generated Targets for Virtual Training
7 Remote Real Time In-Flight Health Monitoring of Aircrew
8 MF-TDMA based Wideband SATCOM Modem
9 Foliage Penetration Radar
10 Reduction of RCS of Naval Warships
11 Target Detection in Chaff Environment