IIT Mandi: Himachal Pradesh CM inaugurates Himalayan Startup Trek 2022; winners list

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi Technology Incubator Catalyst on Friday kicked off the sixth edition of its annual flagship event, Himalayan Startup Trek (HST 2022). The theme of this year's HST 2022 was innovative ideas for leveraging computers' intelligence and computation capabilities in decision-making, prediction, estimation, communication, and processing.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Jai Ram Thakur inaugurated the sixth edition of HST 2022. The three-day event, which started on August 26, aimed at bringing together the stakeholders of the Indian startup ecosystem and providing young entrepreneurs with a platform to pitch their ideas.

This year, IIT Mandi saw over 440 applications from industries such as agriculture, biotechnology, healthcare, clean energy, waste management, enterprise solutions, education, travel, and consumer internet.

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IIT Mandi: Winners list HST 2022

60 teams were chosen for the grand finale and 11 winners from three thematic areas received a cash prize of Rs 6 lakh along with an incubation offer from IIT Mandi Catalyst. Here’s the list of winning teams and the ideas they pitched.

1. Sunbots Innovations LLP - Sunbots is developing a camera-based wearable device that translates visually into audio by using camera vision to provide actionable intelligence for Blind and Visually impaired persons.

2. NEMA AI – The team is developing a comprehensive learning platform for Neurodivergent individuals between the ages of 5 -30 years who suffered from Autism by Brain-Computer Interface

3. SerachGrand – The team is building a team that fits in shutter to monitor and protect shops from burglary using IoT technology

4. Binary loop – Binary loop is developing multirole UAV for surveillance, agriculture and logistic sector to solve problems like surveillance of remote places, spraying pesticides in the agriculture field and cargo delivery in remote places

5. WebAgro Tech – WebAgro Tech is developing Portable Collection and size sorting equipment for round fruit intermediaries to solve field harvest time losses. Using a collection arm and portable size sorting equipment

6. Oddessemania Private Limited – Oddessemania is developing a pre-travel guide booking and itinerary-building web app

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7. Atalia Magastores Private Limited – Megastores.com has developed a social marketplace that is customised and easy to use for artisans and brands that solves problems of promoting and selling handicrafts items to worldwide customers

8. Kinowave – Kinowave is developing Grid-scale energy solutions to store energy at a large scale for power distribution companies to solve peak load problems using non-renewable energy generation methods

9. New Unnat India Techno Solution & Innovation Pvt Ltd – New Unnat India Techno Solution & Innovation has developed a novel hybrid water Purifier “Shuddham”, especially for Rural India. It is low-cost drinking water purification with cooling and natural test-added technology

10. Urbanblue Technologies Pvt Ltd – Urban Blue Technologies is developing a treatment plant management suite of software for wastewater treatment plants to solve the delays in analysing and troubleshooting the data from treatment plants using a mix of AI – MI and computer vision

11. Exsure Pvt Ltd – Exsure is building a drug delivery platform that will target both cancer cells and cancer stem cells thereby reducing the chance of tumour recurrence

Encouraging young entrepreneurs, Thakur said, "IIT Mandi has the most appropriate place for researchers, it gives the best environment to the young students to think better and build their Startup ideas. I expect that IIT Mandi should focus on a few targeted areas which could be beneficial for the livelihood in Himachal Pradesh such as smart agriculture and horticulture,"

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“The key features for a startup are to solve problems to help society at large. IIT Mandi Catalyst is aspiring to convert the Kamand valley into Silicon Valley of the Himalayas and is enabling young minds to solve unique problems of the progressive world. We at IIT Mandi look forward to inspiring more and more startups with innovative solutions," IIT Mandi director Laxmidhar Behera said.

IIT Mandi Catalyst has assisted over 260 startups in a variety of industries, including clean energy, healthcare, enterprise management, agriculture, manufacturing, biotech, education, and consumer internet. Catalyst has hosted over 130 such programmes to date and has disbursed or committed over Rs six crore to startups for prototyping and commercialization purposes.