JioVio, Ethereal Machines win ITC Infotech's start-up contest

  Bengaluru: Bengaluru-based Ethereal Machines and med tech company JioVio have won the top honours among start-ups competing at ITC Infotech's flagship co-creation and technology innovation platform "iTech 2018".

As part of the event, ITC Infotech, the IT services arm of diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd, ran two parallel tracks -- a "Startup Showcase" and a programming "Codeathon" -- on December 8-9 at its headquarters here.

As winners of the "Startup Showcase" segment of the event, JioVio and Ethereal Machines were awarded a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh each, and the chance to co-develop their solution with ITC Infotech as a part of its go-to-market strategy, ITC Infotech said on Monday.

The "Startup Showcase" was designed with the objective of providing innovative technology start-ups a platform to present their solutions directly to businesses in three areas -- fintech, healthtech and Industry 4.0 -- which includes Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud computing among others.

JioVio is focused on providing a positive pregnancy, infant care and parenting experience with its innovation in healthcare technology. 

Ethereal Machines solves manufacturing problems faced by industries by equipping them with affordable machines. 

Additionally, this year two startups -- Detect Technology and NeoEyed won the special jury award for presenting exemplary solutions, the company said.

For the event, 15 start-ups were invited to showcase their solutions from the over 200 entries that were received.

The iTech programming Codeathon, an open forum for students, professional developers and early stage technology start-ups, received over 3,500 entries and 32 teams were shortlisted for the final round of development. 

Participants addressed various challenges including applications to enable labour matching for farmers and farm owners, interactive mobile user interface (UI) component using platform specific software development kits (SDKs), offline analytics for mobile applications, offline app sync and process automation. 

Pulse (formerly known as DocTalk) won the Codeathon challenge and was awarded a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh, ITC Infotech said.. 

The first runner-up was a team from the Institute of Technical Education and Research Bhubaneswar who won a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh and the second runner-up was a team from global printing company RR Donnelley who won a cash prize of Rs 50,000. 

ITC Infotech earlier announced its plan to make "iTech" an international event from 2019.

"We are planning to organise iTech in Britain and the US from next year," Sushma Rajagopalan, CEO and Managing Director of ITC Infotech, told reporters on the sidelines of the inaugural day of the fourth edition of the event.