INDUS-X (India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem), an initiative to build a defence innovation bridge by Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) of the Ministry of Defence, and the US Department of Defence (DoD), began an exercise to begin the Indo-US CrossLinx accelerator programme to prepare defence start-ups to expand to the US markets, on Monday.
IIT-Hyderabad’s iTIC Incubator - supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and H4XLabs organised a workshop for the same at the launch event.
Once the start-ups are ready, they would embark on a trip to the US for seven to 10 days to engage with government officials, investors, defence contractors, and stakeholders.
At the programme’s culmination, start-ups would showcase their products as part of Demo Day in India, said an official release.
The launch event included a series of sessions on the US defence landscape by experts from diverse domains. The event saw the participation of various defence start-ups and MSMEs – medium, small-scale and micro-enterprises from across India.
“We are confident about the blooming strategic cooperation between India and the US through various initiatives like iCET and INDUS-X and assure the support of IIT-H to such initiatives,” said IIT-Hyderabad director B.S. Murthy. Dean Suryakumar said: “The Joint Accelerator Program is a testament to the collaborative spirit of INDUS-X and we hope that it will galvanise the Indian start-ups for global presence.”
IDex programme director Capt. Roy Joseph talked about opportunities for start-ups under the Indo-US collaboration agenda. Since its inception in 2015, iTIC supported 130+ start-ups through pre-incubation, incubation, and acceleration programs and has directly sanctioned more than ₹8 crore to start-ups. So far, iTIC start-ups have generated over ₹1,200 crore of revenues and created 1,000 plus jobs.
Other dignitaries present were D. Alan Johnson (Lt Col-United States Air Force, Director-Defense Cooperation in Armaments DCA, U.S. Embassy, New Delhi), Jonathan Mangrum (Policy Advisor for South Asia, OSD - OUSD Policy- Indo Pacific Security Affairs), ecosystem partner EriK Azulay (Director and Founder-ACIR), Capt. Roy Joseph, Program Director, iDEX) and team from iDEX.
