MeitY Launches NIDAR 2.0 With Rs 65 Lakh Prize Pool for Students

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Drone Federation India (DFI) have launched NIDAR 2.0 for 2026-27 under the SwaYaan initiative. The challenge asks students to build advanced drones and indigenous drone components powered by the Indian-made VEGA processor.

NIDAR 2.0 features two tracks. The Drone Innovation track focuses on autonomous swarm drones for disaster response and GPS-denied drones for indoor industrial inspection. The Component Innovation track requires teams to develop an indigenous flight controller and autopilot using the VEGA processor and indigenous electronic components. The top 100 teams will each receive two VEGA processor kits for development and testing.

The challenge offers a prize pool of over Rs 65 lakh, along with startup incubation, cloud computing credits, software support and corporate internships for winning teams.

The first edition of NIDAR, launched in March 2025, attracted 3,448 students from 22 states, four Union Territories and 109 cities. A total of 93 teams reached the grand finale, while 24 teams won prizes worth Rs 40 lakh.

The SwaYaan initiative, approved by MeitY in July 2022 with an outlay of about Rs 89.87 crore over five years, has trained more than 51,000 people through a network of 30 premier institutions, including IISc, IITs, IIITs, NITs, C-DAC and NIELIT.