Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw shared some upbeat news on his social media network. Earlier today, he tweeted, "Railway partners with start-ups. 297 proposals received to solve 11 problems." 

These proposals were part of the Ministry's 'Start-ups For Railways' scheme, launched earlier in 2022. The majority of these, amounting to 43, was to resolve the broken rail detection system. The issue that received the least offers at four proposals was for Headway Improvement System for suburban sections interoperable with the Indian Railways National ATP system.

The Ministry received 41 applications for building an app for post-training revision, self-service refresher courses, and remote sensing. 40 for automation of track inspection, while 39 were submitted for developing the analytical tool by using digital data to improve passenger services.

The other issues that Indian Railways solicited solutions for included rail stress monitoring system, track inspection activities automation, superior elastomeric pad design for heavy haul freight wagons and development of an online condition monitoring system for traction motors of 3-phase electric locomotives. It also sought ways to deal with issues like a lightweight wagon for transporting commodities like salt, track cleaning machine, geomatics and GID for bridge inspection. 

Officials from Indian Railways will evaluate these proposals to select the companies whose solutions are most viable. Its team members will work with these shortlisted start-ups to finalise their prototypes and complete the trials. The start-ups would receive up to INR 1.5 crore in funding to scale up deployment. All intellectual property rights will remain with start-ups, per this initiative's provisions.

The Indian Railways introduced the 'Start-ups For Railways' initiative in early 2022 to leverage the country's start-up ecosystem and its ability to create innovative solutions for its core problems. Start-ups who qualified for this programme could avail of a 50 per cent capital grant and assured market as part of this collaboration.