Gujarat Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network  

Genesis

Honey Bee Network and SRISTI along with many other institutions and individuals have been involved in documentation, dissemination, experimentation and value addition to grassroots innovations. Honey Bee has developed a unique database of several thousand grassroots innovations in agriculture (herbal pesticides, tilting cart, three wheel tractor, growth regulators, etc.), natural resource management, veterinary and animal husbandry, poultry keeping, farm machinery, fishing, leather processing and vegetative dyes etc. The network also attempts to protect IPRs of the grassroots innovators and intends to share any benefits accrued from commercialization with innovators.

However, despite best efforts, it was difficult to scale up many innovations on large scale through commercial or non-commercial channel. To sustain creativity and ethics of experimentation it was realized incentive need to be generated for commercialization through value addition in innovations. It is in this context that an idea of an innovation promotion or venture capital fund was discussed and debated at the International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at Grassroots  (ICCIG), jointly organised by IIM Ahmedabad and SRISTI. Mr S K Shelat, the then Chief Secretary Government of Gujarat announced support for setting up Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN).