Rural Innovation Fund

As envisaged by the then Mission 2007, one of the major obstacles in the way of the emergence of Rural Knowledge Societies’ across India is lack of cost effective and adaptive technologies that can address area specific needs and demands and can function effectively in varied rural
environments. It necessitates ‘innovation’ of new technologies and ‘adaptation’ of existing ones in such a way that they operate efficiently under prevalent rural constraints and conditions.

To address this problem, Microsoft India, under its project Saksham, and International Development Research Centre (IDRC) through its initiative telecentre.org, have collaborated to constitute a fund known as ‘ The Mission 2007 Rural Innovation Fund (RIF)’.

The Fund seeks to support R&D in the area of designing and incubating innovative software applications and solutions that are both practical and replicable across the country.In addition,it also seeks to support initiatives towards developing and packaging services and content that can be delivered through the Village Knowledge Centres (VKCs) or Information Kiosks.

The Fund will support only project costs,and may not be accessed for recruitment,core organizational costs and recurrent needs.

The RIF set up a committee under the Mission and requested for proposals tobe funded.The idea is to support small innovations of individuals and grassroots organizations.

Rural Innovation Fund: Awardees
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