Students of Telangana, it's time to put your thinking caps on and rack your brains to innovate and get us out of this pandemic by participating in the COVID-19 Innovation Challenge. T-Hub, Telangana's pioneering innovation ecosystem who has launched the challenge in partnership with Q City, the IT Park in Hyderabad, will be with you every step along the way. Launched on March 30, the focus area of the programme is to come up with solutions for COVID-19 in three areas, which are, tracking of potentially infected people, prediction as to how the virus will spread and developing low-cost equipment like ventilators and such. "We are aspiring to draw from those who are at the very beginning of their entrepreneurship journey, even grassroots innovators from Tier II and Tier III, who are closest to the problem statement, and want to help them innovate," says Ravi Narayan, CEO, T-Hub.
When the focus should be
Once students are selected, they move on to receive advanced mentorship from subject matter experts from T-Hub, Q City, Emerging Technologies Wing, Information Technology, Electronics and Communication Department, Government of Telangana, and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB). Because students don't always have the technical know-how when it comes to these kinds of problems, the partners will help out in this matter soon. "Out of the 400 participants, even if we get 15-20 solutions and we are able to take them to some level of maturity then that will be a great success for us," says the CEO and adds, "Real sparks and insights come from unencumbered minds that don't go by what's worked in the past."
Ravi Narayan, CEO, T-Hub | (Pic: T-Hub)
Help on call
Students will also be virtually mentored through two webinars — one will be conducted on April 6 and the other on April 13. "These webinars have been organised because we want to be there for them. Not so much to tell them what to do, but how to do it, to hand-hold them if necessary," shares the CEO. This is so that before submitting the applications, students can get as much help as they need. "This challenge is one way to not just celebrate the success of entrepreneurs, but also help them grow to a global level," says the CEO. He also reminds us of T-Hub's focus on finding and encouraging innovators from Tier II and Tier III cities apart from helping improve the capabilities of Atal Tinkering Labs and so on. The last date for submitting applications is April 20 and the final event will be held on April 27.