THEBUSINESSBYTES BUREAU

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 15, 2026

In a major push to bridge the gap between India’s vast innovation ecosystem and the needs of its villages, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India Prof Ajay Kumar Sood on Saturday launched the RSVC-AMRIT platform, a digital backbone designed to accelerate technology transfer, foster rural innovation and take appropriate technologies closer to the last mile.

Developed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in collaboration with the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (OPSA) to the Government of India, the platform was launched on the 80th Independence Day, marking a significant step towards technology-led rural transformation. The launch event was attended by NABARD Chairman Dr Shaji Krishnan V., representatives of various organisations and other stakeholders.

Addressing the gathering, Sood said AMRIT has been conceived as a comprehensive digital ecosystem supporting the entire lifecycle of the RuTAGe Smart Village Centre (RSVC) initiative — from discovery and validation of technologies to their deployment, tracking, collaboration, monitoring and knowledge management.

He said the platform would progressively bring innovators, technology providers, startups, validators, accelerators, implementation partners, funding agencies, academic institutions and rural communities onto a common platform, creating a stronger bridge between technological capabilities and grassroots requirements.

By connecting these diverse stakeholders, AMRIT is expected to facilitate collaboration, speed up the dissemination of appropriate technologies and help ensure that innovations reach rural communities where they can have the greatest impact.

Highlighting the need for such an ecosystem, Krishnan said India possesses a rich network of scientific institutions, innovators, startups and technology providers, but ensuring that the right technologies reach the right rural communities remains a key challenge.

AMRIT, he said, seeks to address this gap by connecting rural needs with innovations, institutions and implementation mechanisms, thereby strengthening technology dissemination and adoption at the grassroots level.

Krishnan also reaffirmed NABARD’s commitment to supporting such initiatives across the country, in addition to the eight RSVCs currently being supported by the development finance institution.

The RSVC initiative is aimed at facilitating the transfer of appropriate, affordable and locally relevant technologies from research institutions, innovators and startups to rural communities through village-level technology hubs.

These centres cover a wide range of areas, including agriculture, rural enterprises, renewable energy, education, assistive technologies, water and sanitation and citizen services, creating local platforms through which technology can be demonstrated, adapted and adopted.

With the launch of AMRIT, the physical outreach of RSVCs will now be complemented by a digital layer, enabling innovations, technologies, best practices and collaboration opportunities to be discovered and shared on a wider scale.

NABARD expects the platform to evolve into a national repository of rural innovations and technologies, while strengthening linkages among innovators, institutions, implementation agencies and rural communities. The initiative is also expected to contribute to the broader vision of Viksit Bharat 2047 by enabling technology and innovation to become more accessible to rural India.

The initiative builds on an earlier tripartite Memorandum of Understanding between OPSA, NABARD and NABFOUNDATION, a subsidiary of NABARD. NABARD has also established a Centre of Excellence on RSVCs at its head office in Mumbai to further strengthen the institutional framework for the initiative.

On the occasion, NABARD also shared the broad contours of its scheme for establishing RSVCs, which will be supported by NABARD and set up in collaboration with corporates through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, with NABFOUNDATION serving as the implementation partner.