Startups AirVlabs, Alluvium,
Chistats were announced as winners of the challenges
NASSCOM Centre of Excellence
IoT& AI, an initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & Information
Technology (MeitY), and the Gujarat government organised a
Manufacturing Innovation Challenge 2020 (MIC2020) from 15th July 2020 to 21st
August 2020. Objective of this challenge was to build a first of a kind
platform for enterprise and start-up collaboration to solve key challenges
manufacturing industry is facing today. MIC2020 received overwhelming response
as 88 matured startups from across the country registered for the challenges
and they went through a rigorous screening process of four rounds.
NASSCOM CoE in conjunction with JK
Lakshmi Cements Ltd, Bayer Corpscience, and Tata Chemicals Ltd nominated three
use cases i.e. Workers Health and Safety, Solution to Promote Safety of
Workers in Large Plants; Predictive maintenance of high-value assets; and 360°
Virtual Tour of plant for which startups were encouraged to solve any
of the challenges by submitting a proposal. IIT Gandhinagar was the Research
Partner and Gujarat Electronics & Software Industries Association (GESIA)
was the Outreach partner. Twelve top startups presented to Jury that had representation
from senior leaders from industry, academia and government.
In an online award ceremony, AirVlabs –
Kesh Kesavadas and Chinmay Sengupta, Alluvium – Suraj Rajan
and Siri Chandana Medehal, Chistats – Rahul Lahane and Yogesh
Karpate were announced as winners of the three challenges. These
start-ups will now get an opportunity to work on a remunerative Proof of
Concept with companies who nominated their use cases. In addition, start-ups
will also get one-year membership to the NASSCOM CoE Acceleration Program.
“NASSCOM CoE is building an
ecosystem for manufacturing companies to work with technology companies and
innovative start-ups to drive adoption of Industry 4.0 solutions. MIC 2020 was
launched to accelerate this mission and received exceptional response. This
challenge created value for everyone as it helped enterprises find the best
solution partner and start-ups got an opportunity to work with their dream
companies. Success of this program has motivated us to run these challenges
every quarter and we look forward to getting similar support in all our future
initiatives”, Amit Saluja, Sr. Director & Vertical Head,
Manufacturing, Gandhinagar, NASSCOM CoE.
Vinita Singhania, Managing Director, JK Lakshmi
Cement “We are delighted to be a part of such an initiative from NASSCOM
CoE. Manufacturing Innovation Challenge has helped us connect with top
class start-ups who can be of big help in creating our future innovations. We
encourage other manufacturing companies also to leverage this platform as a
means to make your plant smarter and safer with digital. We believe that the
use of digital technology like AI, IoT, AR etc for manufacturing processes optimize
sustainable development i.e. productive maintenance, reduced cost and saves
time.”
Platforms like MIC can be a great
potential to accelerate to kick-start a Digital Transformation journey in the
country’s formidable industries. In current situation when companies are doing
best to maximize the capacity utilization, such initiatives can be of great
support for them to embrace digital technologies to increase productivity,
efficiency and create a safe work environment for workers.
Gandhinagar/New
Delhi