NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) today signed a Statement of Intent (SOI) with SAP to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. As part of the SOI, SAP in 2018 will adopt 100 Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL) for five years to nurture the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning among secondary school children across India. The program aims to enable students to learn advanced technology topics relevant to digital transformation and the Internet of Things, e.g. Design Thinking methodology, introduction to programming languages and experiential science learning.

Acknowledging the importance of such collaborations, Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, said, “India’s growth for the next few decades will depend on the innovations coming out of these tinkering labs. Tomorrow’s ideas come from students, who will disrupt industries and creative sectors with new technologies and processes which will thrust India into the leadership position for technological creativity and innovation. This is possible only through effective public-private partnership and we are delighted to have SAP partner with us on AIM to nurture the future talent of our country”.

Mission Director, AIM, Ramanathan Ramanan, added, “Such partnerships are a win-win situation for AIM and its partners. This partnership shall help support and boost innovations from the ATLs. The support to Atal Incubators will catalyze adoption of the innovations to commercial scales, ensuring deployment of the innovations to the domestic and international markets quickly and efficiently.”

SAP employee volunteers will coach and mentor students in advanced technology topics and the design lab of SAP Labs India, will provide trainings and allow students to gain hands-on experience with technology gadgets.

 NITI Aayog’s AIM envisions the creation of a collaborative ecosystem, where students, teachers, mentors and industry partners work to facilitate innovation, foster scientific temper and an entrepreneurial spirit in the children of today, who will go on to become successful contributors to nation-building tomorrow.

Background:

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is Government of India’s flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. AIM is mandated to create an umbrella structure to oversee innovation ecosystem of the country and revolutionizing the innovation eco-system - touching upon the entire innovation life cycle through various programs. Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs) create innovators, Atal Incubation Centre and support to Established Incubation Centre will take the innovations to the market and a network of Incubators shall help create enterprises around these innovations.

Till date, AIM has already announced selection of 2441 schools across India to establish ATLs covering 93% of the total districts in India and 98% of the upcoming smart cities representing all states and 5 out of 7 UTs. More than 50,000+ school students have been engaged in ATLs last year. The goal is to expand the reach of ATLs to every district and set up over 30,000 ATLs across the country over the next three years.

AIM also ensures training of teachers and mentors. It has organized a pan-India training workshop “Unbox Tinkering” which lasted over 100 days and at 10
locations. 500+ teachers were trained and 100+ prototypes created by teachers from different streams of science, mathematics, history etc. Several other initiatives, including ‘ATL School of the Month Challenge’, Community Day are conducted frequently to engage the ATLs.

Public-private partnership fosters STEM innovation as industry adopts school tinkering labs and mentors students. AIM and SAP entered a collaborative arrangement for SAP to adopt a cohort of Atal Tinkering Laboratories, providing corporate volunteers to mentor students, delivering advanced-technology training (programming, IoT concepts and Design Thinking), and granting access to industry design lab facilities to give students practical experience, while linking support for Atal Incubation Centres to accelerate commercialization and scaling of innovations from the tinkering labs.