New Rail Tech policy unveiled to tap startups

New Delhi: The Indian Railways Thursday launched a new Rail Tech policy to engage innovators, startups, industry, and institutions to promote innovation. Announcing the policy, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said it was aimed at addressing innovation challenges faced by the national transporter.

"Rail Tech will be permanently open for startups," the minister said, adding that the selection process has been eased to encourage speedier implementation. Startups will be allowed to propose solutions that will be vetted by the Railway Board before approval.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Elephant Intrusion Detection System (EIDS), AI-based fire detection system in coaches, and drone based broken rail detection system are among the innovation challenges that need to be addressed.


Solutions for rail stress monitoring system, sensor-based load calculation device on parcel vans (VPUs), and solar panel on coaches have also been listed.

Vaishnaw said the startups which prove their solutions for the Indian Railways can target exporting their products as well.

This is an improvement over the previous Railways startup policy. An official statement said the maximum grant has been doubled for prototype development and trials. Further, scale-up grant has been increased by more than three times.

The government's latest plan tracks the Indian Railway Innovation Policy, launched in June 2022, which provided up to ₹1.5 crore in 50:50 cost-sharing grant support for startups and smaller companies to develop functional prototypes. The policy focused on safety, efficiency, and maintenance, offering ownership to innovators, a secure sandbox for testing, and assured procurement to successful, innovative, low-cost solutions.

Responding to a query on budgetary allocation for these innovations, Vaishnaw said funds will be met from the head whose problems are being addressed. "Safety related innovations will be funded from within the existing budget earmarked for this purpose," he said.

ET reported about the Rail Tech policy on February 16.

Vaishnaw also announced modernising the processing of court cases in the Railway Claims Tribunal (RCT). He said it aims to improve efficiency, accessibility, and transparency in all 23 RCT benches to be connected digitally across India.