Hyderabad: Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IIIT Hyderabad (CIE-IIITH) announced the onboarding of 9 startups for its combined accelerator cohorts Avishkar DeepTech accelerator (Cohort 16), Ojas Medtech accelerator (Cohort 9) and MediaTech accelerator (Cohort 2).
Since the launch of accelerators in 2016, 39 startups have been in the accelerator programs in several advanced tech areas like AI/ML, IoT, and digital health with about 53% raising follow-on funding.
The Accelerator commencement happened for all shortlisted startups on 18 November 2022 in the presence of CIE’s panel of mentors and experts from the industry.
From an overwhelming application pool of 120+ startups, the selection committee shortlisted 9 startups for the program from domains of brain modulation, XR, health diagnosis, digital health, AI, Computer Vision, Edutainment and Advertising.
The accelerator programs offer shortlisted startups up to INR 40L Seed Fund along with a detailed 6-month program that proffers 4 streams of mentorship – Business Strategy, GoToMarket Plan, Technical Review and domain-specific mentorship.
The program is facilitated jointly with Co-creation Consulting, Arka media works and SucSeed Innovation Fund.
Resident mentors for the program guide accelerator startups towards defining a thorough customer segment and business strategy. Key elements of the program include IIITH’s research support, domain mentoring, strategy & GTM planning and market access.
Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, COO CIE-IIITH says, “This flagship program of ours enables 15 deep tech startups every year, bringing unique value that is centred around the combination of research and markets strategy. We are very happy that these are all very early-stage startups with extremely promising technology, receiving formal support for the first time.”
The startups shortlisted for this cohort are:
- Avishkar Cohort 16
- Segritech is a small and affordable automatic grading/sorting solution for fruits and vegetables.
- Parentheses is a Deep Tech Augmented Intelligence which aims at putting the money back in the customer’s pocket by Maximising Man Machine Margins, through its innovative Hard-Tech platform – ‘HuMaC’.
- Anantadi seamlessly integrate products and brands into entertainment content such as movies, TV shows, music videos, web series and streaming content after post-production. They do this with Digital Product Placement with AI.
- Ojas Cohort 9
- Sputnik Brain is building clinically validated novel brain modulation platform which physiologically elicits quick and rapid stress alleviation/pleasure in the brain in a convenient, biomarker-driven, repeatable and chemical-free technology.
- Padmaseetha provides renal care through OmniPD, the world’s first portable PD cycler, allows peritoneal dialysis to be carried out at home without a break from their work.
- Hummsa Biotech is an innovation driven company that is simplifying diagnostics through Biotechnology and Nanotechnology aiming to make quality healthcare affordable and accessible.
- Innovo Care is building smart affordable medical devices with a special focus on the Indian elderly population offering NIBRA-CS for the detection of autonomic neuropathy.
- Mediatech Cohort 2
- Metaverts is a Platform for Advertising on Virtual Real Estate in Games, AR/VR & Metaverse
- BlueBall Media and Entertainment is a Kids Audio Driven Edutainment Platform
The International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH)
IITH is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research that has a greater social impact.
Some of its research domains include Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Cognitive Science, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, Education Technologies, Power Systems, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance.
IIIT Hyderabad is the first IIIT to be set up in the country, in 1998. IIIT Hyderabad is a research university that ranks in the country for research in various areas of computer science.
IIITH also strongly emphasises translating research into products and startups. To enable this, the Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) was set up in 2008, which has since grown to be the largest academic incubator in the country.
The Centre has very active programs across the spectrum of a startup journey. Entrepreneurship courses and workshops for students, Product Labs to seed new products from research, a pre-incubation program to help entrepreneurs create new startups, incubation to nurture early-stage startups, mentoring programs to improve strategy and business development of the startups, investor pitch days, and several talks/workshops from experts and successful entrepreneurs.
CIE-IIITH was supported by DST (TBI) and MeitY (TIDE) in the initial years. Today, there are very active programs focused on emerging technology startups, research-based startups, medical technologies, and social technology startups.
In the past 14 years, CIE has housed over 450+ startups that have raised about 250 Cr funding and created over 2500 jobs.
