India can become world's startup capital: Know why Union Minister Subhas Sarkar said this

India has the potential to become startup capital of the world, Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar said on Thursday, adding that the passion for innovation must become part of the country's learning systems.

"India is rapidly moving towards the path of development. I believe that the passion for innovation must become part of our learning systems. We are one of the largest startup nations and has the potential to become startup capital of the world very soon and such hackathons will create the future innovators and leaders who will lead 'Viksit Bharat'," Sarkar said.

The minister was addressing the grand finale of Smart India Hackathon (SIH), 2022, being held at a private university in Greater Noida.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the participants of the hackathon on Thursday night through video conferencing.

SIH, which started in 2017, is a nationwide initiative to provide students a platform to solve the pressing problems of society, organisations, and government. It aims to inculcate the culture of product innovation, problem-solving and out-of-the-box thinking among students.

More than 15,000 students and mentors are travelling to the 75 nodal centres to take part in the SIH 2022 grand finale.

Students from over 2,900 schools and 2,200 higher educational institutions are tackling 476 problem statements from across 53 Union ministries in the finale, including optical character recognition (OCR) of temple inscriptions and translations in Devanagari scripts, internet of things (IoT)-enabled risk monitoring system in cold supply chain for perishable food items, high-resolution 3D model of terrain, and infrastructure and roads conditions in disaster struck areas.

Every year SIH has two editions -- SIH Software and SIH Hardware. This year Smart India Hackathon-Junior has also been introduced for school students to build a culture of innovation and problem-solving attitude at the school level.

Smart India Hackathon hardware grand finale is scheduled from August 25 to 29 and the software grand finale is scheduled from August 25 to 26.

The winners in the Smart India Hackathon on each problem statement will be awarded a prize amount of Rs 1 lakh. Under the student innovation category, three prizes of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 will be awarded to the winning teams.