18-Aug-2020: Vice President of India Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu virtually announces ARIIA-2020

The Vice-President of India Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu today virtually announced Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2020. Union Minister of Education, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Minister of State for Education and Shri Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre also graced the occasion. Secretary (Higher Education), Shri Amit Khare, Chairman, AICTE, Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, ARIIA Evaluation Committee, Dr. BVR Mohan Reddy, and Chief Innovation Officer, Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell, Dr. Abhay Jere were also present during the occasion through online medium.

The Vice President, Shri M Venkaiah Naidu today called upon researchers and scientists to pay greater attention to agriculture and come up with innovations to address the problems faced by farmers. Speaking on the occasion Shri Naidu said from providing timely information on various issues to farmers to creating cold storage facilities and supplying new technologies should be the focus of innovators and researchers.

He stressed the need for preventing farmers’ exploitation by middlemen and ensuring remunerative prices for their produce. He said the AICTE, ICAR, NIRD and agriculture universities should work in unison to bring new innovations and technologies to farmers.

Emphasizing the need for India’s higher education system to play the role of an enabler and force-multiplier to drive Indian innovation and start-up ecosystem, the Vice President said “Innovation must become the heartbeat of education. Quest for excellence must become the norm”.

Urging educational institutions to reinvent themselves to create these essential conditions for innovation to thrive and creativity to blossom, Shri Naidu said that our educational eco-system must constantly nurture the innate spirit of inquiry and innovative problem-solving.

Expressing his happiness that the New National Education Policy has made a number of recommendations that will foster innovation, he said “It has outlined a new vision that can vastly improve the quality of teaching and learning as well as research”.

The Vice President said the policy lays great emphasis on comprehension, critical thinking, analysis and the joy of discovering new facets of the world of knowledge. “It seeks to break the silos and connect different disciplines through multi-disciplinary learning. Establishing this connection between fragments of information and evidence is truly vital for innovation”, he stressed.

Shri Naidu called for concerted efforts to inculcate the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among our students to make them ‘out of the box’ thinkers, creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs, and job creators rather than job seekers..

Urging higher educational institutions to redouble their efforts to move up in this ranking exercise, the Vice President said India needs many more institutions of high standards to significantly alter the country’s development trajectory. “We need to learn from the best in the world and aim to be better than the best”, he stressed.

Shri Naidu expressed his happiness on completion of two years of ARIIA rankings and congratulated All India Council for Technical Education and Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell for their efforts towards setting goals for the higher education institutes and making India further improve on its global innovation ranking.

Speaking at the occasion, Union Minister of Education, Shri Pokhriyal mentioned that the ranking is named after our former Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ji. Under his leadership, India took many leaps in the field of Innovation. Further, realizing the vision of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, to make India Aatmanirbhar, this ranking is a true reflection of his aspirations and a tribute to his vision and dreams for the nation. Union minister said that ARIIA gives us a reflection of our efforts and provides us with a reason to celebrate our achievements. He mentioned that a National Research Foundation (NRF) will be set up for invigorating innovation and research under recently released Nation Education Policy (NEP). Shri Pokhriyal appealed all higher education institutes across the country to come forward and participate in the upcoming edition of ARIIA 2021.

The Minister informed that this year, a special category for higher educational institutions for women has been introduced to encourage women and bringing gender parity in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship, top place for which was secured by Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women under this category.

Minister of State, Shri Dhotre, said that Ministry of Education has taken several policy initiatives and new programs to make Innovation an integral part of Higher Education System in India. One such initiative was the establishment of Ministry’s Innovation Cell to ensure that various activities and hackathons pertaining to Innovation and entrepreneurship are taken forward at Higher Educational Institute level in a very systematic way.

Secretary, Higher Education, Shri Amit Khare highlighted the efforts that has been put into compilation of all the parameters, data points, and how the awareness sessions were conducted so as to encourage more and more institutes to participate in this path-breaking initiative, because of which, an increase in participation of institutes in ARIIA ranking was observed by 30-35% in comparison to last year. He pressed upon the need and successful execution of such initiatives so as to make the existing innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem more robust.

This year, ARIIA announcement included classification of the institutes into two broad categories and six sub categories. Among these, IIT Madras bagged the top position under the category of Institutes of National Importance, Central Universities, and Centrally Funded Technical Institutes; Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai got the top position under Government and Government Aided Universities; College of Engineering, Pune under Government and Government Aided Colleges; Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar under Private or Self-Financed Universities and S R Engineering College, Warangal under Private or Self-Financed Colleges were declared on top positions respectively.

During the occasion, the Vice-President also announced the opening of ARIIA 2021 and urged the institutes to participate in the ranking.

30-Aug-2018: Innovation Cell and Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) launched by M/o HRD to foster culture of innovation in Higher Education Institutions

In yet another game changing initiative, the Union Minister for HRD, Shri Prakash Javadekar and Union Minister of State for HRD, Dr. Satya Pal Singh launched the Innovation Cell and Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA)at AICTE, New Delhi. 

Innovation cell is MHRD’s initiative and has been established at AICTE premises with a purpose to systematically foster the culture of Innovation in all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the country. The primary mandate of Innovation Cell is to encourage, inspire and nurture young students by exposing them to new ideas and processes resulting in innovative activities in their formative years fostered through Network of Innovation clubs in Higher Educational Institutions.

While addressing the gathering, Shri Prakash Javadekar said that we must create innovation culture in India and for the same we are encouraging Higher Educational Institutions to create innovation club in their campuses. He also said that without innovation no country can achieve sustainable development and prosperity. The Union Minister also said that 21st century is century of Innovation, and the Prime Minister of India has called the decade 2010-20 as the ‘Decade of Innovation’, to unleash the creative potential of every Indian. India has already been improving on global stage in terms of Innovation ranking from 86th place, 5 years ago, to 57th place this year.

He further said that if we want to deliver justice to the poor and make them prosper we need to innovate, without which it is not possible. While talking about young population of the country he said that our young population can be converted into an asset if we innovate and for this reason, innovation is most important. He further said that the establishment of an innovation cell leading to innovation club, leading to Smart India Hackathon and leading to student’s start-ups, are the real eco system which we want to build upon for development of innovation culture in India.

The Union Minister said that for the real outcome there has to be some assessment of what is being done to promote innovation. Therefore, Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) has also been launched today. It will encourage healthy competitiveness among Higher Educational Institutions.

The Union Minister of State for HRD, Dr. Satya Pal Singh said that innovation must become the part of our culture and it must not be limited only to engineering students, it must be open for other students as well. He said that innovation means original thinking and everyone can contribute their ideas to promote innovation.

Secretary (HE), MHRD, Shri R Subrahmanyam, Chairman UGC, Shri D. P. Singh and Chairman AICTE,  Shri  Anil Sahasrabuddhe were also present during the event .

Detailed information about MHRD Innovation Cell and Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) are given below-

MHRD Innovation Cell (MIC): Innovation cell is MHRD’s initiative established at AICTE with a purpose to systematically foster the culture of Innovation in all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the country. The primary mandate of Innovation Cell is to encourage, inspire and nurture young students by exposing them to new ideas and processes resulting in innovative activities in their formative years fostered through Network of Innovation clubs in Higher Educational Institutions.

Major Programs

1. Network of Innovation Clubs (NIC)
2. Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA)
3. Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2019
4. National Student Startup Policy (NSSP)

1. Network of Innovation Clubs (NIC)

MIC will prescribe basic framework for the structure, formation, structure and smooth running of ICs and will soon share list of different activities which ICs need to undertake for the entire academic year.

Why HEIs should join ICs Network?

1. No major capital investment required and IC will make use of existing local ecosystem
2. Students/Faculty associated with ICs will have exclusive opportunity to participate in various Innovation related initiative and competitions organized by MHRD.
3. Win exciting prizes/Certificates every month
4. Meet/ Interact renowned Business Leaders and top-notch academicians
5. Opportunity to nurture and prototype new ideas
6. Mentoring by Industry Professionals
7. Experiment with new technologies.
8. Visit new places and see new culture.

2. Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA)

For India to emerge as a global innovation hub, the youth of our country, especially in higher education institutions (HEIs) need to play a crucial role to create a sustainable innovation ecosystem. Hence, ideally all HEIs should have a comprehensive and functional mechanism to convert research into innovations. This ecosystem will encourage, inspire and nurture young students by exposing them to new ideas and processes resulting in innovative activities in their formative years.

To ensure that Innovation is primary fulcrum of all HEIs, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India is introducing ‘Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA)’ to systematically rank education institutions and universities primarily on innovation related indicators. ARIIA considers all major indicators which are commonly used globally to rank most innovative education institutions/ universities in the world.

ARIIA ranking will certainly inspire Indian institutions to reorient their mind-set and build ecosystems to encourage high quality research, innovation and entrepreneurship. More than quantity, ARIIA will focus on quality of innovations and will try to measure the real impact created by these innovations nationally and internationally. Moreover, ARIIA will set tone and direction for institutions for future development for making them globally competitive and in forefront of innovation.

ARIIA will primarily focus on 5 main parameters

1. Application Open Date: 15th Oct 2018
2. Last Date: 30th Nov 2018
3. Announcement of ARIIA ranks: April 2019

3. Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2019

The third edition of World’s Biggest Open Innovation Model - Smart India Hackathon - 2019 launched on Wednesday, 29th August, 2018 at the hand of Shri Prakash Javadekar, Hon’ble Minister for HRD, Government of India, New Delhi.

Smart India Hackathon 2019 is a nationwide initiative to provide students a platform to solve some of pressing problems we face in our daily lives, and thus inculcate a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem solving. In this new edition, students would have the opportunity to work on challenges faced within the public and private sector organizations, and NGOs in addition to government problems pooled from various union ministries. As like in previous editions, Smart India Hackathon 2019 would also have 2 sub-editions – Software edition (a 36-hour software product development competition) and Hardware edition (a 5 days long hardware product development competition).

4. National Student Startup Policy (NSSP)

AICTE’s Student Start-up Policy: AICTE crafted its Student Start-up Policy and was launched on 16th November 2016 at the hands of Honourable President of India. This policy is designed for the AICTE approved Institutions in accordance with Govt of India’s "Start-up India" Action plan, that was launched on 16th January 2016. AICTE’s Student Start up policy intends to guide AICTE approved institutions to promote student driven innovations and start-ups.

The policy aims at identifying the innovative and entrepreneurial potential of students and transforming them into start-up entrepreneurs. This can be done by developing an ideal entrepreneurial ecosystem and promoting strong inter-institutional partnerships among technical institutions, other ecosystem enablers, different stakeholders, programs, market and society.