Meet The 6 Startups That Showcased In Rajasthan DigiFest 2017

In the second edition of Rajasthan Digifest 2017, a two-day mega event organised by Rajasthan state government’s Department of IT&C, six startups were selected during its Investor Connect programme.

Organised from December 2-3, 2017, the event was geared towards providing a platform to various individuals from the field of IT and e-governance to showcase their skills and innovation. The ‘24-hour mega-hackathon for startups’ and the ‘Investor Connect’ were the highlighted programs of the event.

The selected startups showcased their ideas to the investor partners of the Government of Rajasthan’s iStart programme. The startups were selected from the first batch of GoR’s Qrate programme, managed by Applyifi. Vasundhara Raje, the Honourable Chief Minister of Rajasthan, gave the first set of Qrate cards to selected startups.

Qrate is a unique program that assists startups to sharpen their business plans and investor pitch decks. The programme then connects them to potential investors and customers. Startups are first assessed on various parameters of business and then provided with the Applyifi scorecard and assessment report on their strengths and weaknesses.

Meet The 6 Startups That Received The Qrate Cards

Blueprint: The startup develops innovative mobility solutions for the governments and businesses.

Xane: Xane is an AI-powered SAAS platform for employee engagement. It is basically an AI Chatbot for employee retention, built for HR heads and administrators with a conversational interface like a WhatsApp for employees. The startup is currently based in Gurugram and is founded by three IIT Delhi graduates namely Ayush Jain, Akash Tanwar and Aayush Gautam.

Srjna: It helps schools to set up and manage innovation labs and tinkering labs. It is working to foster curiosity and invention among kids through a “learning by doing”  approach. It was founded by Vivek Pathak, Sharad Bansal, OP Godara, and Kapil Arya, all of whom are alumni of premier institutes like IITs, IIMs and XLRI and is based in Jaipur.

ToRoots: It provides a supporting ecosystem to co-create experiential travel products. The objective is to help travellers easily discover and book unique verified travel experiences created by authenticated escape artists. It is currently based in Jaipur. It was founded by Janki Devi Jr. Jr., Naveen Kumar Meena and Mohit Sharma.

Nextsky: The startup is an incredibly easy-to-use ERP solution for manufacturing companies. It is a platform where the consumers can get easy access to comprehensive APM capabilities, and enables to improve Industrial efficiency in various processes. It is currently based in Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

Bodhi AI: It is an AI-based solution for coaching classes that helps predict students’ performance, and thus allows teachers and students to take corrective action to improve scores. It also helps the teachers to make offline tests in a few clicks and provides individual dashboard for students. It is currently based in Jaipur and the founders are Prashant Pandey, Gourav Sanghai and Mayank Meena.

Other Highlights Of The Rajasthan Digifest 2017

• The two-day event consisted of high-quality panel discussions, showcases of curated tech innovations, workshops, and mentoring clinics, etc.
• The 24 hour long witnessed the participation of 1,800+ people, representing 450 teams across India. The main tech themes on which solutions were built included AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, bioinformatics, and IoT. a
• The three winners of the hackathon will get incubated by the Rajasthan government and will also earn a contract with Department of Information Technology and Communication, Government of Rajasthan worth $22.9K (INR 15 Lakhs), $15.3K (INR 10 Lakhs), and $11.4K (INR 7.5 Lakhs) respectively.
• It also saw the participation of a number of investors, including Mohit Gulati of Altius Ventures, Gopal Modi of Orios Ventures, Prasad Vanga of Anthill Ventures, Anil Joshi of Unicorn Ventures, Anirudh Damani of Artha Ventures, Abhijeet Malhotra of Lead Angels, Digvijay Singh of Indian Angel Network and Ajay Data, Mahavir Sharma, and Siddharth Agarwal of RAIN (Rajasthan Angel Investor Network).

As stated by Anil Joshi of Unicorn Ventures, “I was pleasantly surprised. We typically don’t see such high-quality pitches at startup events.”

Rajasthan: A Growing Startup Hub

Today, Rajasthan is counted amongst the ‘hottest’ junctions for entrepreneurs, incubators and even other sectors such as artisans, craftsmen and more.

With more than $100 Mn infused in homegrown startups like CarDekho, CultureAlley, LogicRoots, BlueBox Media, RazorPay and more, the government is actively involved in catering to the flourishing startup ecosystem of the state.

As a part of its startup infrastructural development, the government has already rolled out initiatives like IStart, Rajasthan Startup Policy 2015, RajNET, DigiFest to name a few.

Further, the Rajasthan government is currently leading the charts to emerge as the number two state in the country in ease of doing business index after Uttarakhand, according to a World Bank report.

Through the initiatives of Rajasthan Government, numerous startups have benefitted from networking, funding and mentorship opportunities. With the Qrate cards being awarded to these six startups during the DigiFest, it will be interesting to see how these startups scale into full-fledged companies in the next few years!