Software start-up by IIT Khargpur students gets funded at India Innovation Championship

Chitkara University recently conducted the grand finale of the 'India Innovation Challenge - 2021' - one of the largest funding fest and university-driven platforms for upcoming start-ups.

With a mission to promote novel and practical innovations, India Innovation Championship witnessed record participation by teams from across the nation and abroad. The Championship is open to innovators, entrepreneurs, designers, thinkers, students, engineers, scientists, coders, trainers, academicians from any background.

Since its launch in October 2020, the 'India Innovation Challenge – 2021' received a record 460 applications from the progressive sectors ranging from fin-tech, agri-tech, ed-tech, waste management solutions to the health sector. Only 23 start-ups qualified for the stringent screening and were allowed to 'Pitch and Present' their ideas to a panel of 10.

Amongst the four start-ups that made it to the finals of IIC-2021, the start-up created by IIT Kharagpur final year students, Tushar Singla, Mann Goel, Anuprava& Shubham, 'eSaathi,' attracted investment and special mention. eSaathi is a software-based UI that aims to bridge the gap between new smartphone users and apps, which have become an essential part post-pandemic lifestyle.

As shared by founders, their eureka moment came when they came across the fact that with nation-wide adoption of digitization for payment related tasks, especially during the pandemic, the instances of frauds had also skyrocketed (especially for new smartphone users). They were quick to identify an opportunity to leverage technology to help the users, and thus 'eSaathi' was born.

eSAATHI provides users with guided audio-visual assistance, which helps them navigate all the apps step-by-step, thus augmenting a real human being. eSAATHI software has been designed to integrate itself with the partner companies' application element ID, thus ensuring a seamless and high-quality guided experience. Once integrated, the user receives guidance to navigate through one's phone, from unlocking the phone to making the payment or updating information.

Curated by Chitkara University Centre for entrepreneurship and education development-CEED and coached by Orbit Future Academy, and backed by seasoned angel investors, VC partners SucSeedIndovation Fund (Hyderabad) and Modular Capital, accelerator partner 100 Watts (Pune), industry bodies like FICCI and MeitY start-up hub, the Government of Himachal Pradesh, Chitkara University's Research and Innovation Network (CURIN) and Chitkara University NEW Gen-IEDC, the challenge was curated to drive entrepreneurship and accelerate promising Research, Innovation, Demonstration and Development (RID&D) in technology, across India.

The 'India Innovation Championship' (IIC) - 2021 grand finale witnessed the raising of the fund by the start-ups including 'Pacify Medical Technologies Pvt.Ltd.