MSME Innovative Scheme (Incubation, Design and IPR)

Context

Recently, the Ministry of MSME (Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises) has launched the MSME Innovative Scheme (Incubation, Design and IPR) along with the MSME IDEA HACKATHON 2022.

About

• The “MSME Innovation” Scheme aims to develop and foster latent innovation in the MSME sector.
• MSME Innovative is a new concept for MSMEs with a combination of innovation in incubation, design intervention and by protecting IPR in a single mode approach.
• MSME Innovative is a comprehensive approach that unifies, synergizes, and converges three subcomponents and interventions to achieve a single goal.
• This unification is to create awareness amongst MSMEs about India’s innovation and motivate them to become MSME Champions.
• This will act as a hub for innovation activities facilitating and guiding development of ideas into viable business propositions that can benefit society directly and can be marketed successfully.
• The government also announced equity support of up to Rs 1 crore for commercialisation of ideas, designs and patents across all three sub-schemes and also to help MSMEs further scale up to raise subsequent funding.
  • For this, a separate corpus will be created and managed by SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India) as the fund manager.
    • SIDBI set up on 2nd April 1990 under an Act of Indian Parliament, acts as the Principal Financial Institution for Promotion, Financing and Development of the MSME sector as well as for coordination of functions of institutions engaged in similar activities.
  • The new scheme will ensure support through guidance, financial support, technical support, and more to MSMEs to scale up.

Details of the sub-schemes are as under:-

• Incubation
• The primary objective of the scheme is to promote and support untapped creativity and to promote adoption of latest technologies in MSMEs that seek the validation of their ideas at the proof-of-concept level.
• Financial assistance up to Rs. 15 lakh per idea and up to Rs. 1.00 crore for relevant plants and machines will be provided.
• Design
• The objective of this component is to bring the Indian manufacturing sector and Design expertise/ Design fraternity on to a common platform.
• It aims to provide expert advice and cost-effective solutions on real time design problems for new product development, its continuous improvement and value addition in existing/new products.
• Financial assistance up to Rs. 40 lakh for design projects and up to Rs. 2.5 lakh for student projects will be provided.
• IPR (Intellectual Property Rights)
• The objective of the scheme is to improve the IP culture in India with a view to enhance the awareness of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) amongst the MSMEs and to encourage creative intellectual endeavor in the Indian economy.
• It also aims to take suitable measures for the protection of ideas, technological innovation and knowledge-driven business strategies developed by the MSMEs for their commercialization and effective utilization of IPR tools through IP Facilitation Centre.
• Financial assistance upto Rs. 5 lakh for Foreign Patent, Rs. 1.00 lakh Domestic Patent, Rs. 2.00 lakh for GI Registration, Rs. 15,000/- for Design Registration, Rs.10,000/- for Trademark in the form of reimbursement.