India Mobile Congress 2019 Hosts Grand Innovation Challenge To Honour Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Skill Development

·All innovations that are feasible for actual deployment were being considered as legitimate entries for the award

·Innovation Challenge identifies unique solutions and encourage innovation in telecom sector

South Asia’s biggest telecom, Internet, and technology event India Mobile Congress 2019 held the Grand Innovation Challenge to foster innovation, entrepreneurship and skill development by encouraging startups and new entrepreneurs in the telecom sector, in line with the Government’s flagship ‘Start up India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives.

The initiative attempts to identify unique solutions and encourage development of innovative products and solutions that can improve connectivity, enhance user experience and facilitate India’s digital transformation and empowerment. The platform is not only relevant for early stage startups, but is also important for scaling stage startups, individuals and accelerators.

Winners of the Grand Innovation Challenge Awards are Sensegiz Tech Pvt ltd and SNAS IoT Labs for Densification of IoT; nebuLARC Tech Pvt ltd won the Enterprise Digital Transformation award; BKC Aggregators won in the Agriculture Technology category, Matisoft Cyber security Ltd won the Cyber security and Privacy award category; Go Sharp Tech and consulting Pvt ltd, Vawsum and Learning Matters won the Interactive Digital Education award category; JuV Technologies Pvt ltd and Notifyvisitors.com won the Customer Experience category.

The innovators were felicitated by Shri Anshu Prakash, Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Also present on the occasion was Mr. Rajan Mathews, Director General, COAI.

Any individual, institution, Lab, Company or Startup in India developing any innovative product or service were eligible to take part in the innovation challenge. However, the only pre-requisite was that the innovation submitted should be at least at the prototype stage or one that is feasible or viable for actual on-ground deployment.

The IMC Grand Innovation Challenge Awards 2019 were organised in association with AGNIi and Invest India, supported by NALCO ETBI, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea Ltd. and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

There are several incentives that the winning startups will be eligible to avail of. These include fiscal incentive of upto to INR 20 lakh (as investment fund) for selected start-ups, induction 'Emerging Technology Business Incubator' at NALCO CoETE for selected start-ups, access to test beds and technologies available to Airtel, Jio and Vodafone India Pvt Ltd. Selected startups will also win a chance to visit and work in the Ericsson innovation lab in Europe.

Themed “Imagine a new connected world: Intelligent, Immersive and Inventive”, IMC 2019 has played host to wide array of panel discussions, conferences, exhibitions and networking events.

New Delhi, 17^th October 2019