Startup Accelerator Espark Viridian Announces Winners Of Its ‘SmartUp’ B-Plan Competition

Espark-Viridian, a startup accelerator for early and growth-seeking startups in-association with Headstart Network Foundation, announced the winners of its – SmartUp 2017 a Pan India Business Plan Competition, held from 13th-14th October at Kirori Mal College in North Campus, Delhi University. The competition was initiated to help budding entrepreneurs validate their ideas, provide one-on-one mentorship from internationally recognized experts and gain access to a wide network of investors.

The 25 shortlisted startups were given three minutes each to pitch their plans on the first day, followed by a two minute Q&A with the jury. After the first round of pitching, a one-to-one mentoring session between the mentors of Espark-Viridian accelerator and the startups was held where the startups learnt how to improve their pitches. On the second day, the program began with 90-second elevator pitches by all the selected startups. This was followed by an interactive talk session by Amit Singh, Managing Director of Headstart Network.

The esteemed jury included Arpit Agrawal, (Principal, Blume Ventures, Co-founder and Director, Headstart Network Foundation), Ashish Taneja (Managing Director, Growx Ventures), Paresh Gupta (Founder, Global Centre for Entrepreneurship and Commerce), Amit Singh (Founder & CEO, Wow Labz Co-Founder and MD, Headstart Network Foundation) and Vibhuti Channa(Director Espark- Viridian Accelerator).

Vibhuti Channa, Director, Espark-Viridian Accelerator stated, “India has a 1.25 billion of youth population and entrepreneurship is the need of an hour. Our endeavour has been to identify budding entrepreneurs and provide them with all necessary support. It is important to nurture and guide an idea in its early stage to ensure it reaches its maximum potential.”

The three startups which are selected as the final three prize winners included Pune based Marketyard Agrisolutions, Bengaluru based Machstatz, and Jaipur based ClinMD. The winning Team Marketyard was awarded a cash prize of $1,546(INR 1 Lakh), runner-up Machstatz was awarded $773(INR 50K), and ClinMD received $386(INR25K) respectively.

Marketyard Agrisolutions: Pune based Marketyard is a mobile application that enables users to buy, sell, and rent everything related to agriculture.

Machstatz: Machstatz provides end to end solution in Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) field ranging from procuring, installing and calibrating smart sensors to advanced machine learning diagnostics guided by augmented reality solutions.

ClinMD: Healthtech startup ClinMD promotes the idea of one patient, one record, thus enabling patients to maintain their health digitally. It ingests data from various healthcare providers like doctors, labs, pharmacies, hospitals, apps etc; structures it to integrate seamlessly into existing healthcare infrastructure to make sense; and enables making an informed decision by knowing patient’s complete health information and providing insights for preventive care.

Espark-Viridian is a startup accelerator for early and growth-seeking startups. It offers an 18-month multi-centre, multi-sector accelerator programme through its five centres spread across Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR.