HYDERABAD: Three Indian startups have won the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge, organized by T-Hub and Boeing. The startups showcased their disruptive business ideas at the ‘Demo Day’, held at Boeing’s India Engineering & Technology Center (BIETC).
The startups – Merxius, HUVIAiR, and ZestIoT – joined three teams from BIETC in presenting to an audience of prospective investors, customers, and government stakeholders. The Demo Day marks the culmination of a three-month accelerator program launched in collaboration with T-Hub, a global startup catalyst that powers entrepreneurship.
Following a stringent evaluation process, six teams from a competing pool of more than 100 ideas and applications, have won the opportunity to join the cohort. “Never before have corporates and startups collaborated as much as they do now.
T- Hub is a key cog that enables this and Boeing has been an instrumental partner of ours that embraces that philosophy. The collaborative ecosystem of corporates and startups like the one T-Hub is driving in the country will become a common trend in a few years. Boeing brings a strong legacy of technological breakthroughs and we are immensely pleased to collaborate with them in exploring the right startup talent to support its innovation goals,” T-Hub, CEO, Jay Krishnan said in a statement.
Boeing will continue to collaborate with the three external startup teams to help further their businesses. The ideas presented by the Boeing teams are under evaluation as potential future company offerings. “Innovation can happen anywhere and startups around the world have the potential to bring disruptive capabilities to aerospace markets and drive our industry forward.
Boeing HorizonX is proud to partner with and invests in startups to help them mature and scale their products and services and create value for Boeing customers,” Boeing HorizonX Ventures, managing director, Brian Schettler said in the same statement. The ideas presented by the three external finalists range from Extended Reality (XR) applications to the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) for aerospace. Merxius develops a product that enables the creation of XR environments to save cost and reduce training time in aerospace manufacturing. HUVIAiR refines custom unmanned aircraft services and software solutions for survey and workflow management.
ZestIoT explores solutions that connect the airport and airplane ecosystem using IoT to optimize ground handling at airports and improve the on-time performance of airplanes. The six shortlisted startups took part in a three-month accelerator where 30 subject matter experts from Boeing and T-Hub mentored them and exposed them to potential customers while strengthening their offerings and capability. “Both external startups as well as internal ideas promise to disrupt business models and service delivery in aerospace. We are excited to tap into a new pool of ideas from India which will surely change the global aerospace industry,” Boeing India, president, Pratyush Kumar said in a statement to the media.
