Kerala tech company wins top prize for innovation

‘V console’, a video conferencing application, developed by Techgentsia at Cherthala Info park in Alappuzha district of Kerala, bagged the first place in the Central Government’s Video Conference Innovation Challenge. Techgentsia will get a contract for 3 years, to provide video conferencing products to the Central and State governments, besides a cash prize of Rs 1 Crore.

Alappuzha: Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday announced the results of Grand Challenge for Developing Video Conference Solution.

Announcing the winners of the Grand Challenge, he said, "I am delighted that Indian entrepreneurs and innovators have responded to the clarion call for Aatmanirbhar Bharat given by Hon'ble Prime Minister of India and have come up with some world-class video conferencing solutions in a short span of four months. We are committed to developing India's software product and mobile app economy in a big way and efforts like this will go a long way in that direction."

According to an official release, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had announced an Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution under the Digital India Initiative on April 12, 2020.

The Innovation Challenge was open for participation from Industry, start-ups and individual experts. The response was received across the country, with a total of 1,983 applications being received, which were evaluated and subsequently supported through a three-stage process (Ideation, Prototype and Product Stage).

Out of these, 12 applicants with innovative VC solutions were shortlisted to develop/mature the prototype for which support of Rs 10 lakhs each was provided. The prototypes so evolved were further evaluated by the eminent Jury comprising of senior officers of the government, reputed academicians and eminent members from the IT industry to shortlist five applicants for building a ready to market product.

The five shortlisted applicants were further provided financial support of Rs 20 lakhs (for three) and Rs 15 lakhs (for two), mentorship, testing and onboarding onto the NIC cloud. Jury and mentors comprising eminent experts from industry, academia and government-provided extensive support to the challenge on pro bono basis.

The five finalists have pitched the solution and Jury, which evaluated each of these products in detail and declared the winners.

The jury declared Vconsol, a product of Alappuzha (Kerala) based on Techgentsia Software Technologies as the winner. The winner of the challenge will be provided financial support of Rs 1 crore with an additional Rs 10 lakhs towards O&M for the next three years and will be adopted for use by the government through a contract.

In addition, the Jury also selected the products developed by three applicants as potential products and decided to offer a developmental contract to be supported by Rs 25 lakhs each for further maturing their product within a period of three months. These three products will be further analysed by a technical committee and subsequently, Ministry of Electronics and IT will recommend to onboard all selected four products on GeM.

This entire process of Grand Challenge was conducted with active participation from some of the best experts working as mentors and members of the jury.

(With inputs from agencies.)