RDI scheme: Government aims to 'jumpstart India's R&D ecosystem'; offer low-interest funding for startups
India's newly approved Research Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme, with a massive Rs 1 lakh crore corpus, is set to provide a major boost to private sector R&D and deep-tech startups by making long-term, affordable financing accessible for high-impact innovation projects, a senior government official said.
The scheme, approved by the Union cabinet on July 1, is designed to ease funding constraints and foster a robust domestic innovation ecosystem.
A senior government official cited by news agency PTI said that the RDI scheme is structured to help companies access long-term, low or nil-interest financing for high-risk, high-tech research projects. The initiative will also support equity-based funding for startups and facilitate the creation of a deep-tech Fund of Funds.
The corpus will be managed through a Special Purpose Fund under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), with Rs 20,000 crore already allocated in the Union Budget for FY26.
The government will provide a 50-year interest-free loan to the fund, which will further allocate capital to second-level fund managers, including AIFs, NBFCs, and Focused Research Organisations.
The official further said that the aim is to help India "jumpstart its R&D ecosystem" by creating a mechanism where ministries can propose relevant technologies for inclusion under the scheme.
by Taboola
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links
Promoted Links
Promoted Links
You May Like
Secure Your Child's Future with Strong English Fluency
Planet Spark
Learn More
Undo
'Any ministry that wants a technology included under the scheme can send a proposal to the department of science and technology,' the official added.
The department of science and technology will act as the nodal agency for implementation and will issue detailed operational guidelines. These will include provisions to ensure effective capital recycling so that private sector RDI efforts continue to receive support over time.
India currently spends just 0.65% of its GDP on R&D, significantly below the global average of 2.7%, and far lower than countries like Israel (6.3%) and South Korea (5%). According to officials, one of the key objectives is to change the perception in the private sector that R&D is a cost rather than an investment.
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the scheme will also fund transformative, higher technology readiness projects, and assist in acquiring critical or strategically significant technologies.
'By addressing the critical need of the private sector for long-term, affordable financing, the RDI Scheme fosters self-reliance and global competitiveness,' he stated.
The scheme will be overseen by multiple layers of governance. The governing board of ANRF, chaired by the Prime Minister, will provide strategic direction. An Executive Council under ANRF will approve project scopes and second-level fund managers.
Meanwhile, an empowered group of secretaries headed by the cabinet secretary will periodically review the scheme's performance and recommend changes.
Officials stressed that selected fund managers will include experts from industry, academia, finance, and technology sectors, ensuring that project evaluations remain independent and effective.
Launched under the broader umbrella of
Startup India
, the RDI scheme adds another critical layer to India's ambition to become a global innovation powerhouse by 2047.
Stay informed with the latest
business
news, updates on
bank holidays
and
public holidays
.
AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
10 minutes ago
- Mint
Bulls to Blu-Smart: Mint's finest narrative journalism so far this year
Six years ago, I interviewed Isabelle Hasleder, a horse whisperer from Chennai. She helps business leaders communicate with, and understand, horses. A bit of 'horse quotient', she told me, could make people from the corporate world emotionally intelligent. We can learn immensely from other animals, too, as my colleague Sayantan Bera realized. You are certain to be endowed with 'bull quotient' if you read his profile of Anmol, a big bull that has fathered over 25,000 calves! He goes for morning walks, takes oil massages, eats cashews, almonds, apples, milk and eggs. The rich diet gives his coat an attractive shine, making him photogenic. This profile, an unusual one, is one of over 100 long reads Mint published in the first half of 2025. Our in-depth reportage mostly chronicles the rise and fall of businesses, and the people leading them. They also narrate the tale of ordinary people, those who get caught in a loop of greed because of the fear of missing out. For instance, in March, our ace market writer, Abhishek Mukherjee, and Sashind Ningthoukhongjam narrated the tale of newbie investors getting a dose of reality: Delhi-based insurance sector executive Prateek Verma, 37, says the biggest change his wife has noticed in him over the past few months is that he has become 'weirdly philosophical'. Can this be attributed to the joys of matrimony? The markets are a great leveller. Perhaps no corporation knows this better than HDFC Bank. For nearly four years, until a year ago, HDFC Bank's stock did not make any money for its investors. But things have started to change. In April, the bank's market valuation crossed ₹ 15 trillion, a landmark so far achieved only by Reliance Industries and Tata Consultancy Services. T. Surendar's in-depth analysis revolved around whether HDFC Bank can now shake up the pecking order of top global banks. Reliance Industries, meanwhile, is shaking up the business of soft drinks, and a new cola war is on the horizon. Soumya Gupta, who writes on consumer businesses, invoked nostalgia. Remember the Campa Cola ad from 1983, which featured Salman Khan? It positioned Campa Cola as the drink of choice for the cool, urban rich. They sang in English and partied at sea. Forty years later, everything has changed. Campa Cola is now just 'Campa'. The party boats in the ads have made way for traditional festivals, desi Indian sounds, and cheering cricket stadiums, with ordinary people sharing plastic bottles of Campa to the tagline 'Naye India Ka Apna Thanda'. This nationalist rebranding appears to have worked, the story tells us, with supporting data. Not all is well at Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT exporter. In fact, 2025-26 could be the company's most challenging year ever. N. Chandrasekaran, the Tata Sons chairman, once turbocharged the IT company as its CEO. In a move reminiscent of Nandan Nilekani returning to rescue Infosys, Chandra has now stepped in to fix things. Varun Sood, our ace investigative reporter, writes on the confusion within the company. The story ends with a billion-dollar question, just starting to do the rounds. You can't miss it. Yet another investigation by Sood focused on two companies, one public, the second one private. Blu-Smart, the private business, once emerged as the third alternative in the ride hailing business, which is dominated by Uber and Ola. It became my go-to cab service for airport trips. The electric cabs were clean, silent and the drivers very well behaved and disciplined. Even on the fast Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, they refused to drive at over 60 km an hour (scary when everyone else is going at 100 km/hr), which would violate company policy. And then, all of a sudden, the business spectacularly blew up. The problems began at the publicly listed Gensol Engineering Ltd. Sood reviewed financial statements and spoke to many executives to piece together a fascinating account of how Gensol's balance sheet was used to build Blu-Smart's business. A governance puzzle, in short. A third Mint investigation dived into the world of 'glowing' e-commerce reviews. Many of them are fake, written to manipulate you into buying. To understand the inner workings of this underground network, Shadma Shaikh, who writes on the app economy and digital culture, spent days observing messages being exchanged over nine Telegram and four WhatsApp groups. She found these groups to be hotspots, places where several key players in the network collaborated to manipulate product ratings. Samiksha Goel, who writes on startups, investigated the workings of Astrotalk, an astrology app. The company claims to have over 41,000 astrologers on its platform, consulting with more than 450,000 daily users. However, Astrotalk's relationship with astrologers has begun to fray. Mint's conversations with about 15 astrologers, five of whom have left the platform, revealed that in the last few months, Astrotalk has been pushing them to keep customers engaged longer, linking their incomes to their ability to have extended conversations. 'It's like a call centre now and not so much an astrology platform," said one astrologer. Despite being in an occupation involving predictions, they had all failed to foresee the unfortunate turn of events. Rich parents, meanwhile, want to cement their child's future. And they foresee an ivy league education as the starting point. But where and when do you begin preparing the kid? In January 2022, a class nine student from a school in Gurugram met a counsellor seeking guidance on how to get into a top college in the US to study medicine. After laying the groundwork in the first year, the counsellor asked the student to shadow a doctor when she was in class 10. For a reason: the student needed to get up close and personal with blood, guts, warts and faecal matter to understand if these were the sort of delights she wanted to deal with on a daily basis over her career. Devina Sengupta, who writes on workplaces and education, came up with this engrossing narrative on the rigour a student goes through to gain admission into an elite college. Don't miss an underlying commentary— on how upper-middle-class parents in India think. A well educated workforce, one that can re-skill and up-skill fast, works for Indian manufacturing, currently in the middle of a disruption because of artificial intelligence (AI). But the factory of the future isn't just built from steel, sensors, and AI—it's shaped by how thoughtfully we balance human potential and machine precision, Pankaj Mishra writes in this fascinating piece on Wipro. The company is testing a new model: 'Factories that think, workers who adapt, and automation built not to replace humans but to help them excel'. Yet another story that dived deep into the possibilities of human potential came from N. Madhavan, who writes on the macro-economy. His story, on how Tamil Nadu's government wooed Nike, Crocs, Puma and Adidas, narrates the tale of industrialization spreading to the state's hinterland. That has empowered people from districts previously ignored in India's manufacturing map, particularly women, like never before. And finally, I would like to draw your attention to the obsession with weight-loss, which is fuelling a drug market worth billions of dollars. Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk have endorsed them. And though Indian celebrities haven't yet admitted to their use, the mystery slimming of Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar and TV talk show host Kapil Sharma have drawn comparisons. T. Surendar and Jessica Jani recently wrote on the drama unfolding in 'GLP-1 drugs'—a high stakes patent battle, the rush for generic brands, coming price wars, and a long list of companies who could benefit from the weight-loss gold rush. There are other terrific long stories this compilation doesn't cover. Do check them out. They all provide what clickbait news does not and cannot—narrative journalism, in-depth reportage and data blended with analysis of top issues from the world of business and technology.
Time of India
15 minutes ago
- Time of India
Gig workers in Bengaluru get another ride option
BENGALURU: For Bengaluru's gig workers, who often juggle long distances and tight delivery windows, reliable transport is everything. Now, after a three-year hiatus, Bounce is back with a revamped scooter rental model that's being positioned as a no-frills mobility option — particularly for those working in delivery and other informal sectors. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Rebranded as Bounce Daily, the service no longer offers its old dockless format, where riders could pick up and drop scooters anywhere in the city. Instead, it now operates through six designated hubs — Banaswadi, Hoodi, Yelahanka, HSR Layout, JP Nagar and RR Nagar — from which scooters can be rented for periods ranging from three days to a full month, and must be returned to the same location. Speaking to TOI, CEO Vivekananda Hallekere said: 'Our first target with rentals is the gig workers and office goers. This is a practical solution for people who rely on two-wheelers for their livelihood.' Of its total fleet of 3,000 scooters, 2,300 are in Bengaluru. Pricing starts at Rs 230–250 per day for longer rentals and goes up to around Rs 285 for short durations. Each scooter is a Bounce Infinity EV, manufactured by the company and features tamper-proof batteries, location tracking, and insurance cover—features designed to deter misuse and improve vehicle reliability. Insured Battery Vehicle Before the pandemic, Bounce was a pioneer of dockless mobility, operating nearly 30,000 scooters and moving over 1.2 lakh riders daily in Bengaluru alone. But its free-form model suffered from misuse, illegal parking, and operational chaos — vulnerabilities that Covid-19 ultimately exposed. Post-pandemic, Bounce is taking a more structured approach. 'We're not ruling out the old 'pick anywhere, drop anywhere' model. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now But it will come back only with stronger user checks, better tech, and perhaps, a community-led referral system,' Hallekere said. The company is also exploring integration with dark stores of food and quick-commerce companies, offering doorstep rentals for gig workers. And outside metros, it aims to partner with local entrepreneurs to bring mobility solutions to underserved district headquarters. Bounce's electric shift also positions it differently from competitors — it's now a battery-swapping, insured, fully electric rental service. Hallekere says this addresses one of the biggest gaps for gig workers: lack of insurance and vehicle security. At its peak, Bounce deployed over 1 lakh helmets in a year. Despite shutting down for three years, many helmets remained in circulation. Some were returned by loyal users, with stories of Ayudha Puja and emotional attachment reflecting the brand's unexpected cultural imprint.
India Today
15 minutes ago
- India Today
OnePlus Nord CE 5 to launch in just 2 days: Here are 5 things we already know
An exact year after the Nord 4, OnePlus is ready to launch its next-gen mainstream series, the Nord 5 series. The series includes two devices: Nord 5 and Nord CE 5. Known as its budget-friendly sibling, the OnePlus Nord CE 5 is generating buzz for its design, battery and processor. While the launch is a few days ahead, OnePlus has already revealed its key specs to the world. The phone is confirmed to be equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Apex chipset, a 7,100mAh battery and a 50-megapixel primary camera. Let's take a deeper look into the upcoming phone's Nord CE 5: 5 things we already knowDesign: OnePlus has fully disclosed the design of its upcoming Nord CE 5. While the Nord CE 5's matte finish distinguishes it completely from its predecessor, the similar pill-shaped camera island on the rear panel still keeps the essence of it. This island consists of a dual-camera set-up. So far, the company has revealed two colour options, blue and marble-like, but the market names are yet to be known. It may also come with an IP54 certification for dust and water The OnePlus Nord CE 5 is expected to sport a bright and flat 6.77-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. This may offer a fluid and immersive viewing experience for both gaming and media. Processor: At its core, the Nord CE 5 is confirmed to feature the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Apex chipset, an octa-core processor based on a 4nm architecture, which should offer solid performance for everyday use as well as heavier workloads. It's likely to be paired with 8GB of RAM and offered in 128GB and 256GB storage variants, with support for microSDXC expansion up to 1TB. The device is expected to ship with Android 15, layered with OxygenOS 15 for a clean and customisable user The company has revealed that the OnePlus Nord CE 5 packs 7,100 battery capacity. Moreover, OnePlus claims that this battery can last up to 2.5 days on a single charge. While the claim sounds a little too optimistic, you have to wait for the launch to know it in the real-world scenario. This massive battery is expected to support 80W SuperVOOC fast In the camera department, the Nord CE 5 is to feature a dual rear setup, headlined by a 50-megapixel primary sensor, likely the Sony LYT-600, with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) and several AI features. The rumour has it that this will be accompanied by an 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens. On the front, a 16-megapixel camera is expected to handle selfies and video calls. The phone is also said to support 4K video recording at 60 frames per Nord CE 5: India Price (expected)The OnePlus Nord CE 5 is likely to be priced aggressively, in line with the Nord CE 4. According to reports, the base variant with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage could launch at around Rs 24,999, while the higher 256GB storage model may retail for approximately Rs 26,999. The phone is expected to be available via the OnePlus India website, Amazon, and select offline OnePlus retail stores.- Ends
