MeitY, Meta Launch Programme to Support 40 Startups

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

The Ministry of Electronics and IT’s (MeitY’s) Startup Hub signed an agreement with social media giant Meta to launch an accelerator programme to offer grants to startups building services for the metaverse, a digital world which is a combination of virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) accessed through a browser or headset.

• The programme will support 40 early-stage startups working in extended reality (XR) technologies with a grant of Rs 20 lakh each.
• The accelerator programme will be implemented by four institutions 
• International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad
• AIC SMU Technology Business Incubation Foundation, Sikkim
• Gujarat University Startup and Entrepreneurship Council, Gujarat
• Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer at IIT Delhi.
• Young Indian Startups, especially from tier 2/3 cities, will play a significant role in emerging tech areas like Web 3.0, blockchain, AI, Metaverse etc. and will shape the future of Technology and the internet for India and the world.

What is Extended Reality (XR)?

• XR is an emerging umbrella term for all the immersive technologies.
• The ones we already have today—augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) plus those that are still to be created.
• All immersive technologies extend the reality we experience by either blending the virtual and “real” worlds or by creating a fully immersive experience.

What is Augmented Reality?

• Augmented reality is the integration of digital information with the user’s environment in real time. 
• Unlike virtual reality, which creates a totally artificial environment, augmented reality uses the existing environment and overlays new information on top of it.

Virtual reality (VR)

• In contrast to augmented reality, in a virtual reality experience, users are fully immersed in a simulated digital environment.
• Individuals must put on a VR headset or head-mounted display to get a 360 -degree view of an artificial world that fools their brain into believing they are, e.g., walking on the moon, swimming under the ocean

Mixed reality (MR)

• In mixed reality, digital and real-world objects co-exist and can interact with one another in real-time.
• This is the latest immersive technology and is sometimes referred to as hybrid reality. It requires an MR headset and a lot more processing power than VR or AR.