IIT Bombay launches e-Yantra Innovation Challenge with Rs 1 crore startup seed funding at stake

MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay has launched the e-Yantra Innovation Challenge (eYIC 2022-23) to seek solutions for inclusive urban infrastructure. The e-Yantra project is funded by the ministry of education and hosted at the CSE department of IIT Bombay.

This year’s eYIC 2022 themes are “Sustainable and Advanced Technologies for Helping Urban Inclusivity and Agriculture”. “Inclusivity here caters to Persons with Disabilities (PWD), who constitute almost 2.2% of our population, that is 30 million people, but have to lag behind due to less inclusive urban spaces,” IIT B said in a statement.

Registration for e-Yantra Innovation Challenge 2022 started on September 1 and will remain open till 25 September, 2022.

Winning teams who successfully pitch will receive seed funding from a prize pool of Rs 1 crore. The institute also announced Rs 25 lakhs worth of prizes.

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The e-Yantra Innovation Challenge is divided into four stages. Stage 1 is a training sprint that familiarizes participants with the theme, trains them in technologies, and helps them articulate problems with training through MOOCs and live sessions by experts.

Stage 2 is a prototyping sprint where teams work under e-Yantra mentorship to build a prototype of their proposed solution. Stage 3 is an innovation sprint where e-Yantra helps develop a pitch to an Incubator.

The last stage is an implementation sprint, where teams refine their Proof-of-concept (PoC) under the guidance of e-Yantra mentors. e-Yantra provides the resources, training and guidance, and even a travel allowance and boarding/lodging at IIT Bombay for the Finals at IIT Bombay.

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IIT Bombay further informed, “The e-Yantra Innovation Challenge gives participants a platform to launch their own startups with incubation support from the IIT Bombay Incubator SINE. It has already nurtured startups such as Nex Robotics, Nibrus Technologies (Mine Surveying Drones), Drona Automation (Sewer Cleaning robots), and Katomaran (Mobile robots), to name a few.”

This year, e-Yantra has tied up with Deutsche Bank, Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE, IIT-Bombay), Desai Sethi School of Entrepreneurship (DSSE, IIT-Bombay), IIT Tirupati, Technology Innovation Hub, Navavishkar, Inclusive Divyangjan Entrepreneur Association (IDEA), Design Bridge Foundation, CAG CEPT University and Geospatial Information Science and Engineering Hub, (GISE, IIT Bombay).