Meet The Winners Of The India-Israel Innovation Challenge

The India-Israel Innovation Bridge, has announced the winners of the India-Israel Innovation Challenge, which comprised of 18 teams from various sectors like agriculture, water technology and digital health.

The challenge called upon Israeli and Indian startups to come up with solutions to address the critical social issues in the fields of agriculture, water and digital health. The 18 winners will get an opportunity to take their ideas to the next level with the support of the two governments.

The India–Israel Innovation Bridge was launched by the Hon’ble Prime Ministers of India and Israel on July 6, 2017. The bridge has taken the shape of a tech platform that facilitates bilateral co-operation between Indian and Israeli startups, tech hubs, corporations and other key innovation ecosystem players.

India-Israel Innovation Challenge 2017: In Detail

Within the areas of agriculture, water technology and digital health, two specific problem statements from each area were identified for the challenge. In agriculture, the focus was on reducing post-harvest loss, improving market linkages, enhancing productivity, and increasing farmers’ earnings.

The issues identified in the area of water technology revolved around wastewater treatment, desalination, recycling or purifying large water sources, and producing potable drinking water at the point of use. Digital Health invited solutions to health management for NCDs (Non-Communicable Diseases) and low-cost diagnostics in rural areas.

A Look At The Winners Of The Challenge

Agriculture

Amvicube: Founded in 2014,  the agritech startup aims to provide intelligent IT solutions for the proper determination of the quality of rice without dehusking it. Paddy Analyser, a product developed by the startup, helps farmers to segregate the rice produce with maximum precision. The startup is currently based in Raichur, Bengaluru.

RF Wave Technologies: Founded in 2011, RF Wave Technologies Corporation designs and develops high-performance modules, for technically demanding radio frequency (RF), and microwave wave applications covering the frequency range of DC to 8.5 GHz. It is currently based in Bengaluru.

Yuktix Technologies: Founded in October 2013, the agritech startup creates remote monitoring solutions for various markets. The startup primarily works on post-harvest management and crop disease prevention in the field of agriculture by providing sensor-based devices that can be installed in the fields.

Amber Solutions: The startup aims at developing a solution for monitoring of food grains health stored in the warehouse. Every year, around 10% of the total grain produce is wasted because of poor monitoring and storing facilities. The founding team comprises of three students pursuing engineering at BITS Pilani, namely Aseem Sindwani, Cheral Khandediya, Arka Talukdar.

Jagadeesh B Hanjarappa proposed a solution related to the improvement of water and fertilizer use efficiency. He also proposed a solution to increase the yield of horticultural and agricultural crops.

Vignesh Ravichandran has developed farmcorder, which is an imaging sensor based agro advisory system. It is a handheld leaf scanning device which captures the image of the leaf under infrared and visual spectrum. A farmer can scan 20 sample leaves of the farm and the scanned leaf images are then sent to a server over a mobile network. With the help of Deep Learning, the cloud application determines the adequate fertilizer type and requirement for that specific crop variety. Through IVRS – Interactive Voice Response System, the farmer is given a quick explanation of the fertilizer application plan in the local language.

Water Technology

Innotech Intervention: The startup aims to translate laboratory-based innovative technologies for its commercialisation. It currently operates in sectors related to environmental waste management, ecological restoration of contaminated sites, alternative and nonconventional sources of energy. The startup is based in Guwahati.

PurePani: PurePani is an online drinking water ordering marketplace based out of Hyderabad, India. PurePani offers customers the convenience of ordering drinking water through a mobile app. Customers can choose the best price, best quality, best brands, and also avail fast delivery from the best-rated sellers in their locality.

Oceo Water: Founded in 2016, the startup aims to provide a sustainable, intelligent and affordable water purification solution to every life across the globe. It has built their first product named OCEO Smart Water Purifier which combines water purification and IoT and is open for pre-booking on their website. The startup is currently based in Bengaluru.

Vanita Prasad: India has 17% of world population and only 4% of world fresh water resource. 62,000 MLD sewage is generated but no more than 18,883 MLD (21%) of sewage is actually treated. Out of 816 STPs, only 522 work. In wake of this Waste Water Treatment Solution and Supply of low-quality water is emerging and Vanita Prasad aims to fix the issue.

Rinaldo John: The total water consumption will increase from 5% in 2000 to 11% by 2050 in India. 23 Indian metropolitan cities produce approximately, 9275 MM L of waste-water per day, of which 31% is only treated. Karthikumar S proposed a suitable method for treating the waste-water.

Karthikumar S: The conventional method for the detection of pesticide contamination using analytical equipment are costly and laborious. Further, all such facilities are available only at industries and research laboratories. Rinaldo John’s proposal will bring such facilities to the household to check the quality of water at low cost and highly sensitive.

Digital Health

I Love 9 Months Fitness Solutions:  The startup provides wellness services to pregnant women and helps them to take the right choices during those 9 months. Various fitness lessons, expert advice and remedies are provided to improve the infant health outcome.

Bioscan Research: The Ahmedabad-based startup has developed an affordable, non-invasive screening tool for a quick scan onsite that can be effectively used by non-specialists (such as physicians and paramedic staff) to detect intracranial bleeding that can save lives of millions of patients whose brain injuries go undiagnosed. The device costs one-tenth of the price of spectroscopes available in the market.

Innov4Sight Health and Biomedical Systems: Founded in 2014 and based in Bengaluru, the startup uses information technology, analytics, bioinformatics, biotechnology, biomedical engineering, educational technology in the healthcare sector to reduce errors, second guesses and improve effective fertility and cancer care. The team has developed solutions like ParSight, Vyabl to generate accurate cancer data cells.

Zeolr Technologies: The Delhi-based startup has developed a smart inhaler named RespirON, which helps Asthma patients track and monitor their pulmonary health and medicine compliance. IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) has invested an undisclosed amount in the startup.

Mercuri Biotechnologies: It is a biotechnology-based startup located in Bengaluru. Bioinnovation Centre. It mainly focusses on DNA technology.

Ujjwaal Bhardwaj: The solution aims to solve healthcare problems by developing low-cost reliable device with daily monitoring, patient analytics so that the treatment of a patient is not interrupted in between.

The winners will receive an opportunity to work on the proof of concept for their solutions with the support of corporates and investor partners as well as selected incubators from India and Israel. iCreate and T-Hub are the anchor incubation partners of the challenge and will be offering a 6-month programme to the top teams.

The winners also get to participate in ‘the Co-Creation Summit’, that will bring together stakeholders from both startup ecosystems to facilitate collaborations. Overall, the India-Israel Innovation Challenge will open new doors for these startups to achieve further growth.

For more information on the winners, click here.