This report covers the MIC-AIM Collaborative Webinar Series session on Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) Initiatives for Higher Education Institutions, held on 25th August 2026 from 11:30 AM onwards in online mode via Webex. The Ministry of Education's Innovation Cell (MIC) organised the event in collaboration with AICTE's Institution's Innovation Council (IIC). The session featured Mr Prateek Das, Program Director, and Ms Deepali Upadhyay, Program Lead, both from the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, as guest speakers, with opening remarks delivered by Dr Deepan Kumar Sahu, Assistant Innovation Director, MIC. The session was moderated by Mr. Abhishek and Mr. Selva, and was attended by IIC convenors, presidents, heads of institutions, faculty members, students, and innovators from institutions across the country.
The objective of the session was to familiarise IIC member institutions with the range of programs and support mechanisms offered by AIM, and to strengthen the linkage between school-level innovation initiatives such as Atal Tinkering Labs and higher education innovation infrastructure such as Atal Incubation Centres, in keeping with the continuity envisioned under NEP 2020. It also aimed to create awareness among institutions, faculty, students, and entrepreneurs about available funding, incubation, and collaboration opportunities, with particular emphasis on underserved regions including tier-2 and tier-3 towns, aspirational districts, and the northeastern and Himalayan states. A further objective was to encourage IIC institutions to actively engage with AIM's ecosystem-building initiatives, such as the Mentor of Change program, by contributing faculty and industry expertise to nearby Atal Tinkering Labs, while reinforcing a collaborative, convergence-based approach among central agencies rather than fragmented or duplicated efforts.
Mr. Prateek Das introduced AIM as a national flagship mission set up under NITI Aayog to accelerate India's innovation and entrepreneurship capacity, structured around an ecosystem framework of input, throughput, and output — respectively focused on increasing the number of innovators, improving their success rate through strong institutions, and enabling market access for startups. He outlined AIM's core programs before elaborating on those most relevant to higher education institutions, describing Atal Incubation Centres (AIC) as "finishing schools" for startups and explaining that AIM's approach differed from earlier incubation models by focusing on underleveraged sectors such as textiles, coffee, and atomic energy, adopting sector-specific rather than sector-agnostic incubators, and deliberately expanding into tier-2 and tier-3 institutions rather than concentrating solely on tier-1 cities. He also introduced the Atal Community Innovation Centres (ACIC), which target tier-3 and tier-4 towns to nurture grassroots micro-entrepreneurs solving local problems, and the New India Challenge, which provides pure grant funding to startups working on nationally significant and socially relevant problems. Looking ahead, he outlined the upcoming Industrial Accelerator program, an industry-led and government-co-funded initiative designed to help startups move toward commercial readiness and integrate into industrial supply chains through active industry participation from an early stage.
Ms Deepali Upadhyay spoke about the Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) program, describing it as a school-level maker-space initiative for students from middle school through senior secondary, equipped with tools such as 3D printers, robotics kits, and electronics, aimed at building scientific temper and design thinking. She noted that the program continues to reach far-flung and underserved regions, with students progressing from tinkering activities into innovation competitions and hackathons, and eventually into structured Student Innovator and Student Entrepreneurship Programs that prepare them for pitching, business modelling, and commercialisation of their ideas.
The session concluded with Dr Deepan Kumar Sahu reaffirming MIC's long-standing collaboration with AIM and reiterating the importance of strengthening ties between school-level and higher-education innovation ecosystems. He highlighted MIC's own initiatives, including the Impact Lecture Scheme supporting institutions in geographically disadvantaged and aspirational districts, and expressed intent to revive the Mentor of Change program, under which IIC members would mentor nearby Atal Tinkering Labs. The session closed with a vote of thanks extended to Mr Prateek Das and Ms Deepali Upadhyay for their insights, and a reaffirmation of continued collaboration between MIC, AICTE, and AIM to support innovation and entrepreneurship across India's higher education institutions.