The Department of Science and Technology (DST) India helped establish the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) - India, on Feb 28th 2000, with the main goal of providing institutional support in scouting, spawning, sustaining and scaling up grassroots green innovations and helping their transition to self supporting activities.
The foundation has a Governing Council chaired by Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, Former Director General CSIR. and President Global Research Alliance. Professor Anil K. Gupta, President SRISTI and Professor Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, is the Executive Vice Chairperson of NIF.
For the last twenty years the Honeybee Network and Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) have been scouting innovations by farmers, artisans, women, etc. at the grassroots level.
Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN) scales up innovations, from the Honey Bee database of innovations, through value additions in innovations to sustain creativity and ethics of experimentation. GIAN was conceived at the International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at Grassroots (ICCIG), jointly organized by IIM Ahmedabad and SRISTI.
The Honey Bee database of 10,000 innovations, collected and documented by SRISTI, would be part of the National Register of Innovations to be managed and supported by NIF.
