Indian Railways Unveils Rail Tech for Startups

The Indian Railways has introduced a new 'Rail Tech' policy to encourage innovation from start-ups, industry, and academic institutions. Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that the policy will be permanently open, with a simplified selection process to expedite solution implementation.

This initiative targets specific innovation challenges, including AI-based systems for detecting elephant intrusions and fires in coaches, and drone-based methods for identifying broken rails. Other areas include rail stress monitoring and solar panel integration on coaches.

The updated policy doubles the maximum grant for prototype development and trials, and more than triples the scale-up grant compared to previous schemes. This builds on the June 2022 innovation policy, which offered significant funding for prototype creation.

In addition to fostering domestic innovation, the minister suggested that successful start-ups could explore export opportunities for their solutions. Funds for these innovations will be drawn from the budgets of the departments addressing the respective problems.