Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog recently announced the launch of applications for the Community Innovator Fellowship (CIF), an initiative of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog in collaboration with UNDP India to facilitate knowledge building and provide infrastructure support to aspiring community innovators essential for their entrepreneurial journey. Currently, there are 22 community innovator fellows being incubated at the Atal Community Innovation Center (ACIC) programme of AIM.

A Community Innovator Fellow is an individual with an entrepreneurial mind-set with an idea to solve a community challenge through their enterprise. The journey of the fellow has been structured into 5 phases, and applicants can visit the link – https://aim.gov.in/acic-fellowship.php

Speaking at the launch, Dr. Chintan Vaishnav, Mission Director, AIM, mentioned, “At the micro level, the start-up revolution has reached the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India and amped up the startup ecosystem in these regions.” Solving local problems at scale ranging across issues like healthcare, education, agriculture, and financial services is the key driving force behind the Atal Innovation Mission to empower the innovators solving local community problems at the grassroots. With their strategic locations, Atal Community Innovation Centers are witnessing grassroots innovators undergo the transformation journey of pursuing entrepreneurship as their full-fledged career options. With this launch of applications for fellowship, we call upon the applicants to “experience the journey of creating a change in the community.”

This is a one-year-long intensive fellowship programme wherein an aspiring community innovator can apply irrespective of their socio-economic background. It is aimed at creating a conducive environment where knowledge, mentorship, community immersion, and inclusion can prosper through adequate infrastructure and funding. During the course of this fellowship, each fellow would be hosted at an Atal Community Innovation Center and would acquire SDG awareness, entrepreneurial skills, and life skills while working on his or her idea.

AIM has been setting up Atal Community Innovation Centers (ACIC) across the country. Currently there are 14 such centres, spread across 9 states, and 36 more are coming up in the near future to bring the collective number to 50 ACICs.