Niti Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant told ET. “We have seen some unique products which have evolved. We will take them to their delivery levels with the private sector. It’s a private-public partnership, much like we did with Aarogya Setu (app). And, actually, in the long run, Atal Innovation Mission will become really the tech garage of India, rolling out large numbers of new products, new apps which the world will require,” Kant said.

As part of the mission, the government has created tinkering labs in schools, where students can experiment with concepts like 3D printing, use of artificial intelligence and robots. Niti Aayog is working to solve problems in areas such as financial inclusion, healthcare, education and telemedicine, jointly with the private sector, he said. AIM is also working with the Ministry of Defence, Indian Space Research Organisation and other departments to encourage government bodies to buy products from emerging startups to encourage innovation.

“So, we have worked with Isro, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Housing – all of them to actually, to launch new challenges of the problems India is confronted with. Young startups who solve these problems, we will assist, support and handhold and the government will buy those products,” said Kant. The mission, which is assisted by Technologies, currently supports 120 incubation labs across the country. Alok Ohrie, managing director, Dell Technologies India, said the Mission has evolved over time and encouraged innovation. He added that it has been closely involved with some of the key technology-enabled transformations in India such as UIDAI and GST and would continue to create solutions for the next phase of growth.

“In the current environment, there are a couple of sectors that have definitely taken a front seat, and they need to be really provided with solutions that can help them continue to maintain the service levels,” Ohrie said. Dell is working on solutions for education, healthcare and other sectors. “We are trying to bring in solutions for our customers in the education segment that will allow them to not only maintain the classes and the daily routine that children should have by sitting at home and attending those classes, but also creating content that can help them use this content repeatedly,” he said. The company is also working on automated solutions to keep records of patients in India.