Government Funding for Mobile Startups Developing E-Governance Solutions

According to a report by Economic Times, the Government of India is planning to set up a dedicated fund to provide grants for mobile technology ventures that develop solutions for e-governance.

While the exact value of the fund is unknown, it is expected to be carved out of the 700 crore earmarked for the national e-governance plan for this year.

“The fund will be created and managed by the department of information technology for a minimum of three years,” said a government official who did not want to be identified. The size of the fund size is yet to be finalised, he said.

Grants will be awarded for mobile applications that help authenticate Aadhaar or unique identification numbers, provide a birth or death certificate or alert the police in an emergency. By March next year, the government expects to have a number of such applications available on the mobile service delivery gateway, the official e-governance platform.

The Government of India also recently launched the e-gov application store. The app store, developed and hosted by the Department of Electronic and Information Technology (DeitY) through NIC, aims to create a common repository of apps, components and web services that can be used by all government agencies and departments. Also, apps, which can be replicated across central and state levels, will be hosted on cloud for easy access.

[pullquote]Mobile governance has the potential to change the delivery of citizen services in India[/pullquote]”Mobile governance has the potential to change the delivery of citizen services in India,” said Sanjay Swamy, partner at startup incubator AngelPrime who volunteered as an adviser at the Unique Identification Authority of India. “For instance, a change in address in Aadhaar system can automatically reflect in the driving licence of a citizen.”

Startups working in the mobile technology, what do you think about this?