Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday reiterated the Centre's commitment to provide all support to start-ups involved in finding solutions towards promoting 'Swachhata'.

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The minister said this while interacting with the start-ups shortlisted under the 'Swachhata Start-up Challenge', according to an official statement.

Drawing attention towards some of the major challenges to cleanliness, the minister said plastic waste management, mechanised solutions to sewer and septic tank cleaning, and scientific processing of solid and liquid waste provide huge opportunities to start-ups for innovation and enterprise development, it stated.

The ministry said the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U), in collaboration with AFD (Agence Franaise de Developpement) and the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), launched the 'Swachhata Startup Challenge' on January 27 to promote an enabling environment for development start-ups and entrepreneurs in the waste management sector.

According to the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry, the challenge aimed to award 10 winning solutions from start-ups with financial support of Rs 25 lakh per selected project and a one-year incubation support.

Apart from this, eligible start-ups will also get additional incentives which includes up to Rs 50 lakh of follow-on investment from Villgro (implementation partner of the challenge) and up to USD 100,000 worth credits and technology support from technology partner Amazon Web Services.

As part of the challenge, applications were invited from January 27 to April 15, against which a total of 244 solutions were received, it stated.

Screening of applications was done and 30 solutions were shortlisted for the next round of evaluation by a jury consisting of academicians, industry representatives, officials etc, the statement said.

The top 10 applications among these will be awarded, it added.