GOVT LAUNCHES BHIM 2.0

NEW DELHI: The IT Ministry on Monday unveiled a slew of new initiatives and programmes, including BHIM 2.0 that packs-in new functionalities, supports additional languages and has increased transaction limits.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also launched a Startup Hub portal and Indian Software Product Registry at IT Ministry's Meity Start-up Summit.

BHIM app, a UPI based payment interface developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that allows real time fund transfer, was launched in December, 2016. "In order to make BHIM app more feature-rich and effective it has been enhanced with a bunch of new functionalities. Some of the striking features marking BHIM 2.0 include a 'Donation' gateway, increased transaction limits for high value transactions, linking multiple bank accounts, offers from merchants, option of applying in IPO, gifting money...," an official release said.

The new version of BHIM also supports three additional languages — Konkani, Bhojpuri and Haryanvi — over and above the existing 13.

Meity Startup Hub (MSH) has been envisioned as an overarching collaborative platform to act as a national coordination, facilitation and interconnected centre for all activities in the tech startup ecosystem. MSH will support startups to reach out to mentors and facilitate startups to scale from ideation to marketplace.

"MSH portal brings onboard key constituents of the tech startup ecosystem with startups, technology incubation centres, Centres of Excellence (Coes), mentors, VCS and angels together. It is also mandated to integrate existing programmes and innovation related activities of Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity)," the release said.

The minister also launched an Indian software products registry, which will act as a single window portal to collate Indian software product database.