President of India Ram Nath Kovind inaugurated the Festival of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Gandhinagar, Gujarat on Friday.

He also presented the 10th Biennial National Grassroots Innovation Awards. 

Speaking on the occasion, the President said that as we seek to meet important developmental goals and build a caring, inclusive and happy society, we have to draw upon the power of innovation to find solutions to India’s concerns in diverse domains such as health, education, food security, energy access, environmental protection, and national security.

We have to make all efforts to promote an innovation culture and become an innovation society. This will provide us the best possibility of ensuring that every young Indian will have an opportunity to realise his or her true potential, he added.

The President said that an innovative idea in itself is not enough. It is important to ensure that a creative idea gets the support it needs for its maturing, diffusion and delivery on the ground.

Innovation itself is only the first of two key drivers to ensure that any innovation becomes actionable.

The second key driver is entrepreneurship, which needs to supplement innovation so as to deliver benefits to our fellow citizens.

We need to build an ecosystem for converting innovations into enterprises. This requires backing for start-ups and for incubating young innovators by providing financial, mentoring and policy support, Kovind said.