4 IIT Delhi student-led startups win Rs 50 lakh grants each under endowment nurture fund initiative

NEW DELHI: Four student-led startups from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi win grants worth Rs 50 lakh each. Startups named Circle, Bag-It, Onpery and I-Stem benefit from the Institute's endowment nurture fund initiative.

According to the IITD website, The endowment nurture fund aims to offer graduating students with an opportunity to be awarded seed funding for proposed ventures, encouraging them to embark on developing and nurturing their entrepreneurial ideas and aspirations, rather than seeking job placement.

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The four startup companies to receive the grants are-

• Circle, a startup offering a financial wellness product for organisations to provide daily salary & low-cost retirement to their employees founded by IIT Delhi students Ankur Yadav and Navan Jaiswal.
• Bag-It, founded by Madhukar Ranka and Dipanshu Verma, is an on-demand platform for wholesalers that digitizes the jewellery supply chain for the benefit of retailers.
• Onpery, also known as Care Form Labs pvt ltd, was founded by Pramod Priya Ranjan and Nachiket Thakur from IIT Delhi. It is a menstrual health startup aiming to make green menstruation adaptable and accessible to the masses.
• I-Stem is a startup founded by Akashdeep Bansal, Kartik Sawhney, Shakul Raj Sonker and Sunil Choudhary. It provides digital content accessibility solutions, through which universities and enterprises are making their digital infrastructure like documents and websites, mobile apps accessible and is compatible with assistive technologies used by persons with disability for accessing the digital content for persons with disabilities.

IIT Delhi alumni Indifi Tech, co-founder and CEO, Alok Mittal; S tellaris Venture Partners, partner, Alok Goyal and Athera Venture Partners, general partner, Parag Dhol were the members of the jury that selected the winners.

While speaking about this great initiative to promote entrepreneurship, IIT Delhi Endowment Management Foundation, CEO, Anurag Rastogi said: “The grant provides a cushion to IIT Delhi's student teams to take risk and experiment with innovative ideas, products, and/or business models; that in turn helps spread the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among the student community."