Kochi: In a move to encourage young and talented entrepreneurs, Cochin Shipyard Limited and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have signed an agreement to support start-ups in the maritime sector, which will provide a platform for these entrepreneurs to develop products/services in the marine space with financial support provided by CSL.

Under this initiative, start-ups can get up to Rs 50 lakh as seed grants, Rs 1 crore as prototyping grants, and equity funding for start-ups at the scale up stage. The agreement was signed between V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, and Deepu Surendran, General Manager (C-SAS), CSL.

IIT Madras will act as one of the implementation partners of this initiative and will provide incubation, mentorship, and training to start-ups selected under this programme. The Institute will invite applications online twice a year to identify start-ups for funding under seed fund, pilot grants, and equity investment schemes. This is part of the start-up engagement program ‘Ushus’, launched by CSL to augment the Government’s initiatives to encourage and develop an ecosystem for supporting maritime start-ups from the technical, regulatory, financial, and marketing points of view by bringing the stakeholders together.

Start-ups selected under the scheme would have to be committed on innovation, improvement of products, processes or services, and present a scalable business model with a high potential of employment generation and wealth creation.

Director, IIT Madras V. Kamakoti said, “Management of the maritime sector is increasingly becoming automated, posing interesting challenges to the creative minds. The current partnership shall undoubtedly lead to many innovative Atmanirbhar solutions.”

CSL CMD, Madhu S Nair said, “We are confident that this initiative by CSL, in association with IIT Madras, will catalyse the growth of marine start-ups in the country, as we move forward aiming at onboarding new and emerging technologies in this space. As an initial step, CSL has already declared a corpus of Rs 50 crore for our start-up engagement program ‘Ushus’.”