Amrita TBI Incubator Selects Three Startups As Winners Of PitchFest 2018

Amrita Technology Business Incubator (TBI) will provide Seed investment of $200K to the three winning startups of PitchFest 2018: Yellow Messenger, Linksmart DNA, and Book My Diamond.

The winners were among 800 startups from 22 states to pitch their ideas to potential investors. NITI Aayog, Indian Angel Network, Freshers World, and SAP Startup Studio supported the event.

Entrepreneurs and investors including R. Natarajan, COO and CFO of RNT Capital Ventures, and M Janakiraman, CEO, Matrimony.com, also participated in the event.

Supported by the Government of India and recognised under the Startup India programme, Amrita TBI has incubated 83 startups and mentored 216 startup ideas till date. It claims to have incurred no losses from its investments since its launch in 2008.

Here is a brief about the three winning startups:

• Yellow Messenger: Founded in 2014 by Raghu Kumar and Kishore, Yellow Messenger uses a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform for enterprises to automate and orchestrate intelligent conversations with customers across channels like Facebook, Twitter etc.

• Linksmart DNA: It is an IP-oriented mass market vertical startup that secures products and packages from counterfeiting, tampering, re-fill and warranty fraud.

• Book My Diamond: Mumbai-based Book My Diamond, founded by Sankalp Goyal, Govind Chintapalli and Pinank Kamdar, is a technology platform that helps jewellery retailers to search a live inventory of loose, certified diamonds, and buy them.

On the occasion, Dr Krishnashree Achuthan, CEO of Amrita TBI, said, “This year, Amrita TBI focused on selecting startups that have successfully combined innovative technologies with a high impact on India’s development. We are delighted to see start-ups coming up with ‘green solutions’ with a global appeal.”

Saukhyam Pads and Banashree won the Amrita TBI PitchFest Special Mention awards.

• Saukhyam Pads:  The startup produces cost-effective and eco-friendly reusable sanitary pads, which are made from banana fibre.

• Banashree: It develops advanced datapath architectures to reduce power consumption and lower costs for datapath-intensive integrated circuits (ICs) based on standard cell and custom IC design flows.

Earlier in 2016, PitchFest was won by Preksh Innovations, B2BSphere, MaaxMarket and Meladath Auto Components, who were awarded $120K Seed funding.

In PitchFest 2015, Pingbits, StratDecider Analytics Private Ltd, Velnatural Fibers, Shradhanjanli and Discover Dollar Technologies won $150K in Seed funding.

The success stories of startups that have won PitchFest 2018 and have received the Seed funding from TBI will be much awaited.