What is an Incubator?

• Business incubators are organisations that assist entrepreneurs in developing their businesses, particularly in the early stages.
• These are organisations dedicated to accelerating the growth and success of startups and early-stage businesses.

What is Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)?

• AIM is a flagship initiative of NITI Aayog to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
• It is an umbrella structure tasked with promoting innovation and revolutionising the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• It creates new policies and programmes to promote innovation in various sectors of the economy, as well as providing a platform and opportunities for collaboration to various stakeholders in the entrepreneurial space.

What is Atal Incubation Centre? 

• AIM intends to assist in the establishment of new greenfield incubation centres known as Atal Incubation Centres (AICs), which will nurture innovative startups in their pursuit of becoming scalable and sustainable business enterprises.
• AIM will assist these AICs in developing world- class incubation facilities across the country by providing state-of-the-art physical infrastructure, capital equipment, and operating facilities to their incubatee startups, as well as the availability of sectoral experts for mentoring.
• In addition, business planning assistance, access to seed capital, industry partnerships, training, and other relevant components supporting innovative startups will be provided.
• Furthermore, the majority of AICs established would be sector-specific in areas such as manufacturing, transportation, energy, health, education, agriculture, water, sanitation, Internet of Things, Cyber Security, and so on, in order to foster unprecedented technological innovation in specific sectors.

What is Established Incubation Centre?

• In recent years academia, industry, investors, entrepreneurs, Government organisations, and Non Governmental Organisations have taken the initiative to set up incubation centres across the country. 
• These are brownfield established startup incubators, who need to be supported to augment, enhance and upgrade their incubation capacity manifold and develop a conducive ecosystem by strengthening linkages among these incubation centres, universities, and corporates.
• AIM envisages to invigorate these Established Incubation Centres (EICs) in the country through the provision of financial scale-up support. These EICs would support innovative and high growth startups and help in developing a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country.

What is MAARG portal?

• The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) launched startup registration on the MAARG portal (Mentorship, Advisory, Assistance, Resilience, and Growth) in 2022.
• The MAARG portal is a one-stop shop for startups of all sectors, functions, stages, geographies, and backgrounds.
• The application’s goal is to further boost the startup ecosystem in India by catalysing the startup culture and creating a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship.