$350,000 funding for 5 startups selected for Amrita University’s Technology Business Incubator

Out of 720 startups from across the country that participated in the fifth edition of annual PitchFest, Amrita University’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI) has shortlisted and committed $350,000 in seed funding for five promising start-ups.

Dr. Krishnashree Achuthan, CEO of Amrita University’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI), said, “We hold a PitchFest every year to support the Government’s ambitious ‘Startup India, Standup India’ action plan. This year, we increased the total funding outlay from USD 200,000 to USD 350,000”.

Of the 720 startups that applied, 30 were shortlisted and invited to pitch on Day-1 of the PitchFest, from which, the top 13 were selected for Day-2 and then from this the top-5 startups were selected for funding by Amrita University. The 2017 Amrita TBI PitchFest Winners are:

1. Cookifi: Cookifi helps people build an awesome experience when it comes to food for special meals, house parties, kitty parties, birthday parties, office parties or outdoor events, with variety in food from different cuisines.

2. Swasti Agro & Bioproducts: Develops preventive “vaccines” for plants to save them from various diseases, thus enabling farmers to avoid crop loss.

3. Bizbee: Bizbee is a one-stop-platform for all stakeholders of SME ecosystem, with everybody accessing latest data according to accessibility levels.

4. Nextsky Technologies: Nextsky builds analytic software which gives brief technical insights about all operations an trends in an organization.

5. Miqasa Home Automation: The company aims to bring innovative cost effective solutions in the smart switch boards and universal hub areas. It has already filed five patents.

The NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant addressed the participants through video-conferencing and two startups, Iotranic and HappyOffice, received Special Mention Awards.

Iotranic helps hospitals provide personalized maternal care by solutions to address the different needs of pregnant women in urban and rural markets. HapyyOffice is an automated smart employee feedback system that allows you to take real-time action for improving employee engagement and retention in less than 5 minutes a month.

Amrita University claims their Technology Business Incubator has grown to be amongst the top-five most prolific start-up incubators in India – due to its commitment to promote ground-up innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.

Speaking on the startup ecosystem in India, Dr. Achuthan says that the high quality of startups that have been involved in the competition prompted them to increase the funding, he adds, “The quality of starts-ups which participated this year has been amazing even though the startup climate is a bit dampened currently.”