Days after banning 59 Chinese apps including TikTok and UC Browser, the Indian government announced a new project for local developers to create ‘made in India’ apps.
The app innovation challenge under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat campaign is a challenge for developers to create apps in eight categories such as social networking, e-learning, entertainment, news, and games.
Today there is immense enthusiasm among the tech & start-up community to create world class Made in India Apps. To facilitate their ideas and products @GoI_MeitY and @AIMtoInnovate are launching the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. https://t.co/h0xqjEwPko
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 4, 2020
The challenge is divided into 2 stages with the first one for submission and the second stage for evaluation by the jury and roll out with the market access. 3 winning applications in each category will win a prize of ₹20 lakh ($26,780), ₹15 lakh ($20,085), and ₹10 lakh ($13,390) respectively.
The project’s website has also listed a few examples of problem statements as sub-categories. These sub-categories include speech and camera translation apps, microblogging platforms, news apps, photo-editing apps, maps, and online social gaming apps.
In a LinkedIn post, Modi said the outcome of the app challenge will give better visibility and clarity to existing apps to achieve their goals:
“The outcome of this challenge will be to give better visibility and clarity to existing Apps to achieve their goals and to create tech products to find solutions to tech conundrums with the help of mentorship, tech support, and guidance during the entire life-cycle.”
He added that local developers should focus on solving problems for India and the world. Plus, they should try and promote Indian games.
In April, the Indian government issued a challenge for developers to create a secure video conferencing app for ₹1 crore ($130,000). According to a report by the Economic Times, 10 companies including Zoho and HCL are competing to get the final project.
