Intel, Department of Science & Technology select candidates for 'Digital India Challenge'

Bengaluru: The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Intel India have shortlisted 20 teams for participating in the Innovate for Digital India Challenge.

The Challenge has tasked the participants with the creation of intuitive, easy-to-use solutions that can increase access to critical services for development in two broad areas.

The first area is innovation to create citizen's device platform with features that are relevant and drive mass adoption of technology such as biometric sensing capabilities, peripherals using other sensors, intuitive user interface, gesture recognition, multi-lingual and voice support.

The second area is innovation to create apps that accelerate delivery of e-governance services through eKranti/MyGov apps on mobile platform.

The 20 teams from across India will receive grants of Rs 200,000 per team to develop prototypes in the final stage of this nation-wide contest.

The challenge, launched in April 2015, was open to aspiring and existing entrepreneurs, innovators, academia, designers, engineers and makers and drew 1913 entries from all over the country.

The Challenge is now in the Accelerator phase where the participants will be mentored in Pune for up to 12 weeks starting in August during which they will develop MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) on Intel Architecture.

By the end of the eight-week Accelerator phase, up to 10 teams will be selected and will have access to grants of Rs 500,000. The remaining 10 teams will continue their mentoring phase until completion of 12 weeks.

The top 20 were selected from a pool of 50 shortlisted teams.

Sandeep Aurora, Director Marketing and Market Development, Intel South Asia, said, “We are happy to announce the top 20 participating teams of the Intel & DST Innovate for Digital India Challenge. These teams have been selected after a rigorous judging process. The shortlisted teams have ideas that will help in the realization of the Digital India vision across education, financial inclusion, healthcare and e-governance amongst others.”

HK Mittal, Member Secretary, National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, said “This challenge is proving to be a great platform to combine the best of Intel’s game-changing technology with the government’s Digital India vision and the immense entrepreneurial talent in this country. We look forward to mentoring the Top 20 teams and working with them on their journey of delivering products and solutions that will help realize the Digital India vision.”