government of India’s flagship entrepreneurship initiative, Startup India, is the partner for SmartIDEAthon 2022 and has lent its platform for the submission of students’ ideas.
The best of 32 ideas from the five most burning social themes — Food and Agriculture, Clean/Green Technology, Waste Management, Health Tech and Assistive Technology, and Water Management have made it to the coveted semi-finals.
The top scalable and saleable ideas will get a chance to make a splash at the grand finale on stage in Vizag.
Following multiple rounds of shortlisting from a pool of 1200+ entries and Bootcamp-style coaching, the coveted SmartIDEAthon 2022 Challenge has announced the top 32 teams set to compete it out on the semi-finals stage at GITAM (Deemed to be) University’s Vizag campus.
Teams from Tamil Nadu (9), Karnataka (6), Maharashtra (5), Delhi (3), and Andhra Pradesh (2) have made it to the final 32 with their ambitious social innovation ideas carrying potent answers to five of the most burning issues India faces. Ideas have also been selected from the states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Telangana.
The 32 teams will now sculpt their ideas even more in an Advanced Bootcamp on July 30, followed by semi-finals on August 10 and a grand on-stage finale on August 11, 2022.
Dubbed one of India’s biggest social innovation pitchfests,
the competition is organized by GITAM’s Venture Development Centre (VDC) in association with Startup India (a flagship initiative of the Government of India), Invest India, Northeastern University Center for Emerging Markets (NUCEM), Boston and Northeastern University Center for Entrepreneurship Education (NUCEE), Boston. To boost India’s growing startup culture, the mega pitchfest will culminate in sponsored trips to Boston and cash and grants worth Rs. 30 lakh for winners and runners-up.
The grand-scale event comes at a time when India registered a staggering rise of 15,400 percent in the number of startups from 2016 to mid-2022. SmartIDEAthon 2022 witnessed undergraduate and postgraduate students pursuing engineering and science courses from universities and colleges all over India. Of the 32, the maximum number of shortlisted venture ideas belong to the Health Tech and Assistive Technology (20) theme. On its heels are Food and Agriculture and Clean/Green Technology (4 each) and Waste Management and Water Management (2 each). These themes align with not just the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also the nation’s
Azaadi ka Amrit Mahotsav celebration.
The competing ideas are targeted toward addressing pertinent social issues. In Health Tech and Assistive Technology theme, most of the ideas work towards making health care services accessible and affordable even to the remotest part of the country. Under Waste Management and Water Management theme, students have come up with ideas to solve the burning issue of waste management, while a few venture ideas focus on water scarcity and availability of safe drinking water. Students also submitted ideas to address the depletion of natural resources by using renewable energy in the Green/Clean Tech theme. In the Food and Agriculture theme, the ideas support agriculture, aquaculture, and different food and allied areas.
SmartIDEAthon 2022 has registered participation from 28 states, including 3 Union Territories and some remote cities, proving that it has reached the grassroots of India. From the 1,200+ registrations, ideas were further shortlisted and refined in boot camps using innovative mentoring tools such as storytelling to groom the Top 32.
In the second Bootcamp, highly-experienced professors and venture coaches from VDC will groom the ideas and participants before they take to the final stage in front of judges, including Prof Shameem Javed, Chair, Entrepreneurship Development, IIM Vizag; Malini Parmar, Co-Founder at StoneSoup; and Ramjee Pallela, COO, Atal Incubation Centre – CCMB. Renowned industry stalwarts such as Ajay Ponna Venkatesh (Co-Founder, Scapic, Currently building Flipkart Camera Platform) and Yamuna Sastry (Chief Impact Officer, Dvara Money, and Founder – Cabdost) will inspire the students with their words.
About GITAM (Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management)
GITAM was founded in 1980 by an inspired group of eminent intellectuals and industrialists of Andhra Pradesh led by Dr. M. V. V. S. Murthi, former Member of Parliament and popular philanthropist. Located in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, it also has campuses in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Collectively, the three campuses have 19 institutions under their wing.
The authored article is drafted by Prittle Prattle News exclusively.
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