Top 10 Finalists of Digital Innovation Challenge
In a move to encourage innovations from various parts of the country, Department of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Intel launched the Innovate for Digital India Challenge. This endeavor saw the partnership and support of MyGov. This challenge which is being anchored by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), tasked participants to think out of the box.
The IFDI Challenge received 1913 entries from across the length and breadth of India which aimed at developing breakthrough solutions for India, and in turn provide easy and effective technology in the hands of every citizen. The Challenge aims to encourage the creation of intuitive, easy-to-use solutions that can increase access to critical services imperative for development. The challenge was open to aspiring and existing entrepreneurs, and innovators.
Now in its third stage, the challenge has identified its Top 10 finalists from an extremely talented and competitive Top 20 teams. These Top 20 teams received rigorous mentorship sessions for 12 weeks in Pune, wherein they successfully developed their MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) on Intel® Architecture (IA). The Top 20 finalists also received mentorship sessions from industry stalwarts like Hasit Kaji – Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Tata Consultancy Services; Kiran Karnik – Ex-President, NASSCOM; Aruna Jayanti – Chief Executive Officer, Vikas Jain – Co-Founder, Micromax Informatics Limited; Mr. Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO, MyGov; Debjani Ghosh – Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group, Managing Director, Intel South Asia; H.K. Mittal – Adviser, Member Secretary, National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board and R Chandrashekar, President NASSCOM. The Top 20 teams put their ideas to vote on the MyGov platform besides being evaluated by an eminent jury. The top 10 teams were then selected through a combination of a jury evaluation and MyGov voting.
The jury evaluated the teams on the basis of the idea’s ability to solve a key problem for citizens, delivering value to citizens, market opportunity, scalability of product/business, entry barrier/competition/uniqueness of idea and potential traction in terms of revenue, users and customers. It tasked the participants with the creation of intuitive, easy-to-use solutions that can increase access to critical services.
In the coming few weeks, the Top 10 teams will receive development grants of Rs. 5 lakhs per team and will also interact with design houses along with receiving access to Intel India Maker Lab in Bangalore without undergoing a selection process. The innovations by these Top 10 finalists span across fields of Environment, Analytics, Cloud, Mobility, Healthcare etc. These prototypes aim at simplifying solutions across these industries for better access and availability of such services across the country.
This stage will be followed by the fourth phase where participating teams will receive additional mentoring by industry players and a field immersion experience with select companies. Up to 3 participating teams will be identified after due diligence for providing access to equity investment.
Our shortlisted participants and excerpts from their idea summaries are listed below:
