Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology (S&T); Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated Pune CSIR's new building complex and interacted with startups.

The new institutional building of CSIR-Unit for Research and Development of Information Products (URDIP) is located on National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) Campus and the inauguration was marked by a mini exhibition with selected 30 startup founders working on themes of health, energy, environment, digitalisation and automation.

Dr Singh lauded the companies for developing India’s first CDSCO-approved circulating tumour cell diagnostic solution, India’s first and only bio‐active glass-based synthetic bone‐graft substitute dental products, Next generation bionic arms, customisable Intra‐ocular lenses for improving vision post‐cataract surgery and next generation sodium-ion battery technologies.

Dr Singh visited Venture Center, the national award-winning business incubator hosted by CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, to meet leading science-based startups of Pune city and open a startup showcase meant as a mixer for mentors and mentee startups. 

On the side lines of this event, Venture Center declared outstanding performance by its incubatee startups who clocked revenues in excess of Rs 377 Cr and funding raised  in excess of  Rs 97 Cr during the financial year 2021-22. Besides this, current incubatee companies created more than 1000 jobs during the year most of which were science and technology related jobs.