PIB Delhi – AshwiniVaishnaw, Union Minister for Electronics & IT, Communications and Railways, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics & IT, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, todayfelicitated the winners of the Cyber Security Grand Challenge – a first-of-its-kind Cyber Security challenge to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. The winners of Grand Challenge were awarded with a trophy each and cash prize money of Rupees One Crore to the winner, rupees 60 lakhs to the first runner-up and rupees 40 lakhs to the second runner-up.
The Cyber Security Grand Challenge was launched jointly by Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) and Data Security Council of India(DSCI) on 15thJanuary 2020 with a total prize money of INR 3.2 crore and a goal to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship spirit by building key cybersecurity capabilities in the country and contribute to strengthen the cyber security posture of the nation. Under the aegis of this initiative, Cyber Security start-ups from India are being incentivized to innovate and build solutions that can be adopted in India and taken to global markets as well.The challenge focused on strengthening the cyber security capabilities of the country and development of solutions to benefit the people and society.Innovations in cyber security through such initiatives will help to mitigate cyber threats and secure the cyberspace which will in turn safeguard business landscape and citizens of India.
A unique feature of this challenge is that the IPR of the product being developed as part of the challenge will be owned by the respective start-up. The Challenge was opened with six (6) Problem Statements and was conducted in 3 stages namely Idea, Minimum Viable Product(MVP) and Final Stage. The submissions by the teams were evaluated by the jury panel consisting of Government, Academia, and Industry at each stage to shortlist the entries that could move to the next stage. In Idea (1st) Stage, based on the ‘concept’ and ‘approach’ proposed to build a product for one of the problem statement(s), the jury shortlisted the top 12 teams which moved to the MVP(2nd) Stage. Each of them was given a sum of Rs.5 lakh and mentorship support. In the MVP (2nd) stage, based on their ‘approach’, ‘USPs and value proposition’, ‘deployability’ and ‘product market fit’, jury shortlisted the top six (6) teams, each of whom was given a further sum of Rs.10 lakh. The jury evaluated the final products and selected the winner and runners-up in the final stage.
