Deadline - 15th March 2024
Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre, IIT Kanpur is delighted to announce the hosting of a national level Challenge Grant conducted each year with the sole aim of creating opportunities for young budding engineering students, Innovators, Startups to showcase their creative thinking and innovations for the betterment of the society. The purpose of the Challenge Grant is to provide a platform for the country’s youth to express themselves and demonstrate their ability to innovate toward finding solutions that impact our collective future and sustainability. In addition, participating in this event will provide an excellent platform for students, innovators, startups to interact with innovators of SIIC and experts who have distinguished themselves with contributions in Engineering R&D, Industry and Academia.
Applications are now open for the Challenge Grant under the TIDE 2.0 scheme supported by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) aiming to support technology startups working in emerging technologies through financial and technical support. A challenge grant is an intense competition with a time constraint where participants collaborate to develop prototypes and minimum viable products to address a specific issue.
The Challenge Grant will support solutions generating a creative force leading to sustainable and reliable smart technology/tools/products in the healthcare and smart manufacturing domain. Please check ‘Focus Domains’ section to know more about the sectors.
The Healthcare domain is in a revolutionary phase in the healthcare industry combining Industry 4.0 tools with conventional methods of healthcare creating concepts such as telehealth, telemedicine, etc. for smart and connected health services. We are inviting applications for the following areas:
Smart manufacturing is a broad category of manufacturing that employs computer-integrated manufacturing, high levels of adaptability and rapid design changes, digital information technology, and more flexible technical workforce training. Other goals sometimes include fast changes in production levels based on demand, optimization of the supply chain, efficient production and recyclability. In this concept, as smart factory has interoperable systems, multi- scale dynamic modelling and simulation, intelligent automation, strong cyber security, and networked sensors.
Smart manufacturing’ synonymously used with ‘Industry 4.0’, shortened to I4.0 or simply I4 is a technology-driven approach that encompasses fully-integrated, collaborative manufacturing systems that employ internet-integrated machinery to monitor manufacturing processes in real-time via an open infrastructure. Smart manufacturing involves interoperable systems, intelligent automation, multi-scale dynamic simulation and includes 3D printing, big data processing, advanced industrial robotics with networked sensors, industrial internet of things (IoT), and distributed manufacturing technologies with strong cybersecurity.
These cyber-physical systems entail synergy of production and digital technologies to enable rapid adaptability and design changes, using data analytics that enables newer areas of innovation to optimize manufacturing by creating enhanced quality products, accelerating productivity, increasing energy efficiency, and sustaining safety. They enhance production processes and optimize supply chains by finding solutions to existing and future problems at the speed of business.
Registration of participants which will include webinar series
A student (final year), a start-up, or an entrepreneur can participate.
You can participate with team size of 2 to 4 persons.
Regular updates will be posted on our webpage.
Registration for webinars and Hackathon is free of charge.
Yes, the mandate of this Innovation Challenge is to support solutions in either ‘Healthcare’ or ‘Smart Manufacturing’. You can select one of the listed domain and apply with your own identified problem statements.
Yes, final-year college students can participate in teams.
The top three winners will get funding support, mentorship from industry and domain experts, and technical support for prototype development. Please refer to the event flyer on the web page for details of awards.
The participant should submit a solution/idea relevant to either of the focus domains, ‘Healthcare’ or ‘Smart Manufacturing’.
If a software-only solution is impactful, it can be supported.