ELIGIBILITY

Nature of projects supported

Theme / Focus Areas of Grant program

  • Innovative Polymers & soft materials based products
  • Solutions for polymeric waste management & value addition
  • Circular Economy & Sustainability with regards to materials

Eligibility criteria

  1. The project needs to define a technology or knowledge intensive solution to a well-defined problem as per the above mentioned theme / focus areas
  2. The technology should be innovative/ novel.
  3. Project should be focused on building prototype / prototype validation / implementing a technology / conducting pilot studies.
  4. Every project proposal will need to identify a Project Leader and an Applicant/ Grantee.
  5. The Project Leader (PL) will be an individual who will take responsibility for executing the project.
  6. The Applicant or Grantee can be either of the following:
    • Case 1: Applicant is an individual
    • Case 2: Applicant is a company
  7. PL has to be an individual (one person).
  8. PL is required to be at least 18 years of age as on the date of call for applications.
  9. PL is required to be Indian Citizen. An Indian citizen is defined as one who is in possession of a government approved proof of nationality such as a valid passport, voter’s id etc. Exceptional cases of foreign nationals with potential for impact in India will be considered.
  10. PL has to pursue the project or startup full time with no other concurrent commitments during the project duration.
  11. PL cannot be pursuing a long-term academic/research project (like doctoral students) with significant obligations during the project duration.
  12. PL must have completed basic undergraduate training in natural sciences/engineering/ medicine. Essential qualification is PhD/ MTech/ BTech/ BPharm /MD/ MBBS/ BDS/ MSc / MPhil/ M Des/ MPH /MBA / MSW and equivalents, with under‐ graduate training in Science, Medicine, Engineering. Applicants with a BSc degree with at least 1 year of full-time work or research experience shall also be eligible
  13. If Applicant is a company, the Company / LLP should be registered under the relevant acts in India.
  14. The company should be owned by resident Indian citizens i.e. minimum 51% of the capital is beneficially owned by resident Indian citizen(s) and / or Indian companies, which are ultimately owned and controlled by resident Indian citizens

Not Eligible

  1. Pure software development with no IP potential
  2. Ideas or concepts/exploratory research ideas that have not been proven and projects with no element of novelty
  3. Proposals without preliminary data and technology commercialization objectives
  4. Projects with no plan towards saleable (implementable) technology/ products/services
  5. Funding cannot be used to support PhD student research or any other academic research. The grant is not a research fellowship.