The Education Department, Gujarat has been making persistent efforts to institutionalize the Innovation & Startup Ecosystem in the State through policy, platform, and processes. To augment the support system for nurturing student Start-ups in the State, second edition of Student Start-up and Innovation Policy (SSIP 2.0) was launched on January 05, 2022, which will extend INR 500 Cr support to student innovators and Start-ups.

Under the Policy, various flagship initiatives have been envisaged through which youth can get adequate opportunities to harness their creative potential. We have pioneered various Open Innovation Programmes like hackathons and executed them at a large-scale.

Over the last 7 years, under the Student Start-up and Innovation Policy, the Education Department organized 5 hackathons in which 11,567 student teams, consisting of 57,659 students, registered for 1,676 problem statements shared by 612 departments of the Government of Gujarat, Municipals corporations, government offices, and industries. A total of 4,746 teams participated in the regional rounds, and 1,202 teams advanced to the grand finale of the hackathons. In the end, 174 teams were declared winners, and a total prize money of ₹89 lakh was distributed.

Gujarat Knowledge Society, Education Department is planning to organize “Vikas Saptah Hacakthon 2025” (6th Edition) under SSIP 2.0. Though primarily the program will be designed and executed for finding solutions for various challenges of Industriesfurther attempts will be made to develop the mechanism and process to innovate hardware/software solutions and innovation pertaining to different challenges.

“Hackathon 2025” will be a step forward towards the previous hackathon editions where more than 2000 students are expected to participate and work on problem statements.