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The Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) on Sunday announced that it will join hands with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras to support startups in the maritime sector.

The CSL, in a statement, said that this programme will help young talented entrepreneurs to develop products or services with financial support from the shipyard. This is part of the startup engagement programme 'USHUS' launched by the CSL to support the Centre's initiative in supporting maritime startups.

The agreement was signed between IIT-Madras Director, Prof V. Kamakoti, and CSL General Manager Deepu Surendran. The statement said that IIT- Madras will act as an implementation partner and will provide incubation, mentorship and training to the startups.

Applications will be invited online twice a year to identify startups for funding under seed fund scheme, pilot grants, and equity investment schemes.

The statement said that the startups selected under the scheme have to work on innovation, improvement and development of products, services and employ a scalable business model with a high potential for business generation and creating employment as well as wealth creation.

Prof Kamakoti said: "The management of the maritime sector is becoming automated and is posing interesting challenges to the creative minds."

He also said that the partnership with CSL would lead to several innovative Atmanirbhar solutions.

CSL Managing Director, Madhu Nair, said that the CSL has declared a corpus of Rs 50 crore for the start up programme 'USHUS'.

Startups will get seed grants of Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore as prototyping grants, as well as equity funding at the scale up stage.