DISHA

With the objective of fulfilling NIF’s larger goal of up-scaling grassroots innovations and instances of traditional knowledge SCAI presents DISHA- an Annual Business Plan Competition which gives students an opportunity to convert innovations and traditional knowledge at grassroots into practical business propositions. Students from educational institutions participate to prepare business plans for technologies from the database of NIF and the best ones get rewarded suitably. These business plans would be used by NIF as investment opportunity document (IOD) for approaching prospective entrepreneurs and mentors who would help convert these innovations into products and enterprise/commercialize the same. NIF also has a dedicated incubation fund called Micro Venture Incubation Fund (MVIF) to render financial assistance to all entrepreneurial initiatives based on grassroots innovations. Hence, it is desirable that the business plans prepared by the students are realistic and practical and help build a value chain around innovations by providing incubation assistance.

DISHA was launched in the year 2004,at two events DISHA –North, a regional competition covering 9 north Indian state and DISHA- 2004, an all India event. DISHA has been a grand success with participation from 557 teams representing 79 premier educational institutes.