New Delhi: The department of promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT), working under the Union ministry of commerce and industries, has begun enlisting the startups on its newly-launched portal ‘Maarg’ to provide focussed guidance and support to the new business ideas across the sectors.
Maarg, the abbreviated form of Mentorship, Advisory, Assistance, Resilience and Growth, has been launched as the national mentorship platform by the Startups India. The Startup India, which is currently ranked 3rd largest globally, is focused on catalysing the startup culture and building a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India.
The Maarg portal is a one stop platform to facilitate mentorship for startups across diverse sectors, functions, stages, geographies, and backgrounds. The objectives of the portal are to offer focused guidance, handholding, and support to startups throughout their lifecycle; to establish a formalized and structured platform that facilitates intelligent matchmaking between the mentors and their respective mentees; and to facilitate efficient and expert mentorship for startups and build an outcome-oriented mechanism that allows timely tracking of the mentor-mentee engagements.
Officials said that the startups can now effectively connect with academicians, industry experts, successful founders, seasoned investors, and other experts from across the globe, through artificial intelligence (AI) based matchmaking, to get personalized guidance on growth and strategy.
Also Read: Indian startups to launch space satellites, rockets soon
The key features of the portal include customizable mentorship programs for ecosystem enablers, mobile-friendly user interface, recognition for contributing mentors, video and audio call options, etc. The main objective of the portal, being operationalised in three phases is to boost the Indian startup ecosystem.
The first phase has been executed and more than 400 mentors and experts have been put on board on the portal to guide the entrepreneurs from elementary stages to the final output. The second phase of has rolled on with the Maarg inviting the startups to get on board. Once this process is complete, the third and final phase of the initiate to matchmaking of the startups and mentor would begin, said a senior officer of the DPIIT, adding that interested startups are encouraged to apply at https://maarg.startupindia.gov.in.
Also Read: Union Minister calls for linking of startups with industry at the start
Officials said that innovations are the inevitable engines of growth for a nation, and India alone is home to more than 82,000+ DPIIT recognised startups and over 107 Unicorns. Entrepreneurship is the foundation of our great nation’s economic wealth and prosperity, and we are quickly transforming from a nation of job seekers to a nation of job creators.
