"Students, teachers, startups have enthusiastically participated in Toycathon 2021. The participation of over 1,500 teams during the first grand finale of the event indicates a bright future. The event also strengthens the Aatmanirbhar Bharat campaign," Modi said and lauded the participants from Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana etc which presented their digital toy ideas based on India's history, mythology and the ongoing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic among others.

 

Modi also reiterated his previous comments where he made an appeal to the country's youth with regard to self reliance and local solutions in the world of toys and digital gaming.

 

Toycathon 2021 was jointly launched by the Education ministry, Women and child development, Textile ministry, Department for promotion of textile and internal trade, Information and broadcasting ministry, MSME ministry and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on January 5 this year to crowd-source innovative toys and game ideas.

 

Over 120,000 people across the country participated in this event and over 17,000 ideas were submitted of which 1,567 were shorlisted for the final event which is being held from June 22-24. Amid the prevailing coronavirus pandemic, the final will have teams with digital toy ideas and a separate offline event take place for non-digital toy ideas.

 

"India's domestic market as well as the global toy market offers a huge opportunity to our manufacturing sector. Toycathon-2021 is aimed at boosting the Toy Industry in India to help it capture a wider share of the toy market," the Centre said in a statement.