Meet the 3 winners of Intel’s Digital India challenge for startups

Prototype of iNICU IoT product. Photo credit: Intel.

Infant mortality, lifestyle diseases, urban waste – these are among massive social problems that tech can mitigate in India. Three startups tackling these problems have emerged as winners of a Digital India challenge run up by Intel in collaboration with the Indian government’s department of science and technology (DST) and MyGov. Intel will be announcing the winners later today at the T-Hub incubator in Hyderabad.

Digital India is an Indian government initiative to create enabling conditions for the use of tech. Initially, 20 startups were picked from around 800 applicants for the Digital India challenge. This was further narrowed to 10 startups, whose founders received mentoring and hardware support from Intel over a three-month period. They spanned a range of domains from agriculture and healthcare to renewable resources. The three winners showed the greatest potential among them to build sustainable businesses and make a social impact.

See: AI and IoT define the new India – not outsourcing or ecommerce

iNICU

iNICU cloud-based IoT monitoring of babies. Photo credit: Intel.

Harpreet Singh and Ravneet Kaur lost one of their twin babies who succumbed to sepsis after a preterm birth. The other child survived but was prone to illness because of a suppressed immune system. They felt these could have been averted with timely intervention.

Harpreet has an MS in biomedical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, and has worked for McKinsey, Philips, and other global companies. Ravneet is a post-graduate in computer science. They decided to tackle the complications that arise from premature births which account for one-fifth of infant mortality in India.

Their healthcare IoT startup iNICU captures data from various monitors in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of hospitals on the cloud. This is analyzed in real time to alert doctors and nurses on any alarming change in a baby’s condition. Harpreet tells Tech in Asia that Intel IoT gateway is helping iNICU let doctors tweak the parameters of what’s monitored or change alarm thresholds to suit their requirements. This is especially useful in reducing the need for iNICU presence at the site and encourage adoption.

The startup is running pilot programs in three large hospitals in Delhi, the National Capital Region, and Mumbai. It has also tested it in tier-2 towns. One of the first was Rewari in Haryana. The challenge, points out Harpreet, is the wide range of monitoring devices used, from those in state-of-the-art urban hospitals to frugal healthcare centers in small towns.

See: How a medical device maker got $5 million seed funding

Banyan Nation

Banyan Nation founder and CEO Mani Vajipey. Photo credit: Intel.

This Hyderabad-based startup was incubated at T-Hub. Banyan Nation is using tech to improve the management and recycling of the growing volumes of urban waste in India. It is working with the civic authorities in Warangal, Telangana to deploy sensors in bins, GPS in trucks, and biometric attendance devices to improve the efficiency of waste management with IoT. Cloud-based analytics also help with civic plans.

CEO and co-founder Mani Vajipey has an MS in electrical engineering from the University of Delaware and an MBA from the Columbia Business School. He worked for Qualcomm on mobile technologies. But then he wanted to do something which would make a dent in a massive social problem, and returned home to India, Mani tells Tech in Asia.

The stint with Intel has helped him to visualize integrated approaches. For example, the waste management data from multiple towns like Warangal can be captured and analyzed for policymakers at the state HQ of Hyderabad. One of the most useful resources was a list of low-cost but reliable hardware vendors from Taiwan and China, vetted by Intel.

Banyan Nation also produces high-grade plastic from recycled material. Scientific rigor in segregation and the addition of suitable polymers has enabled it to produce recycled plastic for use in the demanding automotive and consumer electronics industries. Mentorship from a plastic design expert during incubation helped refine this part of Banyan Nation’s business.

AllizHealth

AllizHealth prototype of a wearable wrist band. Photo credit: Intel.

Preventive healthcare startup AllizHealth combines health trackers with a records-keeper and a digital wallet to provide an integrated app. It also has corporate wellness programs and services such as a comparison of diagnostic labs.

See: 80% of the world’s blindness is preventable. This hardware is fighting it

AllizHealth VP Abhishek Verma tells Tech in Asia that the startup used the Intel program to build a prototype of a solar-powered low-cost wrist-band that would signal caregivers over GPS if an elderly person has a fall. Falls are the second leading cause of accidental deaths worldwide, and people over the age of 65 are the most vulnerable, according to WHO.

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