The Minister of State for Education Dr. Subhas Sarkar released the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements 2021

New Delhi. The Union Minister of State for Education, Dr. Subhas Sarkar on 29th of December virtually announced the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021. Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, Shri Rakesh Ranjan, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), Dr. Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell and Dr Mohit Gambhir, Innovation Director, Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell were also present during the release of ARIIA ranking.

On this occasion, The Union Minister of State for Education, Dr. Subhas Sarkar said that ARIIA ranking will certainly inspire Indian institutions to reorient their mind-set and build ecosystems to encourage high quality research, innovation and entrepreneurship in their campuses. Giving emphasis on promoting innovation to achieve a $5 trillion economy by year 2025, Dr Sarkar said that more than quantity, the institute should focus on quality of innovations & research. This will help us achieve the Atmanirbhar Bharat in true sense. Dr Sarkar said that ‘Emphasis on Innovation’ is amongst the three vows taken by our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi during his recent Kashi visit. The other two vows are for Swatch Bharat and Atmabhirbhar Bharat. Considering all these 3 vows, Innovation is the only path for their fulfilment. Hence, we need to give huge push to Innovation and Entrepreneurship within our educational institutions and ARIIA is one major initiative in that direction.

While referring to India’s consistent growth in Innovation and Start-up, Dr Sarkar said that India is one of the largest higher educational systems in the world. There are ample opportunities for higher educational institutions to play the role of enabler to drive Indian innovation and start-up ecosystem. A concerted effort by our higher educational institutions is required towards inculcating the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among our students and to prepare faculty as innovators, out of the box thinkers, creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs, and job creators. This will definitely bring a revolution not only at economic level but also at the social, environmental front. Further, recently announced New Educational Policy 2020 will also make these efforts more effective and efficient and impactful in the long run.

On this occasion, Dr Sarkar appreciated the efforts done by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and MoE’s Innovation Cell in planning & implementing ARIIA and its two editions successfully. He also launched the 4th edition of ARIIA and urged all the higher educational institutions to participate.

Chairman, AICTE, Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe said that indigenous version of innovation and entrepreneurship ranking initiative designed through ARIIA by accounting both national and international contexts, will not only help our Higher Educational Institutions to demonstrate their efforts but also orient them in setting goals at institute level to make India move further up in world rankings.

Highlighting the efforts of Innovation Cell in releasing the ARIIA Ranking, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), Shri Rakesh Ranjan said that ARIIA has set a tone and direction for our institutions. It will help in making them globally competitive and front runner in innovation and entrepreneurship. Shri Ranjan applauded the efforts of all the partnering Institutions along with INFLIBNET, who worked tirelessly to make this ranking framework robust and immensely successful.

Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) is an initiative of Ministry of Education (MoE), Govt. of India to systematically rank all major higher educational institutions in India on indicators related to Innovation, Start-up and Entrepreneurship Development” amongst students and faculties. ARIIA critically evaluate institutions on parameters like patent filing and granted, number of registered students and faculty start-ups, fund generation by incubated start-ups, specialised infrastructure created by institutions to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, etc.

ARIIA-2021 ranking is announced in various categories which includes Centrally funded technical institutions (eg IITs, NITs, etc), State Universities, State standalone Technical colleges, Private universities, Private standalone technical colleges, non-technical government and private universities and institutions. This year the participation has almost doubled to 1438 Institutes and have quadrupled over first edition.
ARIIA 2021 classify participating institutions into under two major categories; Technical and Non-technical. The technical category has following 5 sub-categories;
1. CFTIs, Central University, & Institute of National Importance
2. State University & Deemed University (Govt. & Govt. Aided)
3. Govt. College/Institution (Govt. & Govt. Aided)
4. University & Deemed University (Self-Finance/Private)
5. Private College/Institute (Self-Finance/Private)
The newly introduced non-technical category classify HEIs into two sub-categories;
1. CFIs/Central University/Institute of National Importance (Non-Technical)
2. General (Non-Technical)
All the submitted applications were subjected to multiple stages of screening, validation evaluation as per the ARIIA framework and guideline developed by the evaluation committee. Based on the score and range developed for the parameters and sub-parameters and category wise score and rank prepared for HEIs. Top-performing technical and non-technical HEIs assigned with a rank and band of ‘Outstanding’ whereas all the remaining technical and non-technical institutions in each category assigned a band of either ‘Excellent’ ‘Performer’, ‘Promising’ or ‘Beginner’ to encourage their effort and participation in ARIIA.