Indian IT industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and social network giant Facebook have announced the winners for the second edition of the Code for the Next Billion programme, a media statement said.
The ten selected startups, which range from sectors such as health-tech, ed-tech, socio-tech, agri-tech, and blockchain among others, will be provided with technical, marketing and financial mentoring as well as leadership skills. When the startups graduate from the programme, they can connect with industry leaders such as chief executives, thought leaders, venture capitalists, ecosystem evangelists, and social change leaders. They can also meet potential investors, the statement added.
The six-month programme is aimed at supporting and mentoring social impact startups, which are building mobile applications for new-to-internet or bottom-of-the-pyramid users. The programme aims to accelerate development and adoption of mobile internet applications across India.
“At Facebook, we are committed to support the startup ecosystem and are happy provide to a platform to those who are working to solve social, economic and technical challenges that currently exist in connecting people. Through the Code for the Next Billion programme, with NASSCOM, we will provide mentorship and tools to select 10 startups to boost a developer ecosystem that inspires innovation and also help create social impact,” said Satyajeet Singh, head of platform partnerships at Facebook India and South Asia.
The 10 startups selected for the first edition of the programme were Wallet Guru, Light Vision, Perpignon, Kid Nurture, We-Share, I-We, Huehealth.com, Technovent, Padmavati Agro and Redoctype.
Below is a quick look at the winners of the programme:
Founded in 2015 by Aniket Doegar (chief executive), Mayank Garg (chief research officer), P R Ganapathy (director), and Asha Krishnan (chief technology officer), Haqdarshak helps users access government schemes through a technology-enabled platform.
Through its mobile app, the startup offers users a digitised database of schemes which is matched to a beneficiary’s profile based on eligibility criteria. Beneficiaries can apply for the scheme through the app by filling in applications and providing supporting documents. Since the startup caters to a semi-literate and illiterate rural population, it has trained village-level facilitators to use the Haqdarshak mobile app and who in turn help beneficiaries avail of the government schemes.
Founded in August 2014 by engineer Gaurav Mittal and entrepreneur Vaibhav Asthana, Eye-D has developed an artificial intelligence-powered app for the visually impaired. The mobile app provides audio feedback and can help a user find landmarks, read audio texts, and helps in overall navigation in an area. The startup is in the process of creating a hardware solution, the Eye-D Keypad, which can connect to the mobile app.
The firm provides an e-learning portal for all types of healthcare professionals and it also helps healthcare and dental care providers in recruitment. It was founded in 2012 by Abhinav Girdhar (chief executive) and Shrutika Girdhar (technology head).
For its e-learning solutions, Bodhi uses gamification to create interactive and localised content. Developed as an outcome-based system, the firm’s competency-based assessment tool has tracking abilities to monitor progress at the individual level. It integrates interactive games to increase learner engagement and build a proxy for hands-on training.
TheTeacherApp is a digital platform that provides professional development resources to teachers across India. It was founded in August 2015 by former Nomura executive Vinod Karate, former Google executive Medha Bankhwal, former Teach for India fellow Suvidhi Khurana and Ishan Wahi.
The startup claims to have redesigned the massive open online course (MOOC) system to work in the Indian context. It has created an open source platform which runs digital learning experiences for teachers. These experiences are free, occupy less than 50 megabytes of data, are available offline in an audio-visual interactive format, and the content is delivered in Hindi.
JioVio Healthcare helps hospitals provide maternal care through connected devices and an AI-based cloud platform. It operates in rural and urban areas. Its products include Savemom Kit—an Internet-of-Things kit comprising of monitors to measure blood pressure, hemoglobin, weight, temperature, etc; Savemom telemedicine application—it helps doctors track high-risk mothers and give feedback; and Savemom mobile app—it is used healthcare workers to track pregnant women and can be used to enter healthcare data. The firm was founded in 2016 by entrepreneur Sunder Jagannathan and engineers Senthil Kumar and Divya Venkatesan.
Through an online platform, this startup connects farmers directly with businesses such as restaurants, hotels and retail stores. The businesses create subscriptions with the startup and place orders through a mobile app. The produce, which is sourced directly from farmers, is then delivered to them. KrishHub is currently operational in the National Capital Region and sources produce from farmers in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and NCR.
The agri-tech startup was founded in 2016 by Jyotiska Khasnabish, data science engineer and Bhoopendra Kumar, an IIT Guwahati alumnus.
The startup, which was formerly NewsDistill, is a news aggregation platform that provides hyper local community updates. News content is available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati from leading newspapers and news channels. It was founded in 2015 by Narasimha Reddy (CEO), Bhaskar Reddy (chief marketing officer) and Sridhar Bandlamudi (developer).
This startup allows users to vote for elections through a mobile app. It can also be used to take surveys and answer questionnaires. The app can be used for elections, corporate polls and resolutions, market surveys, opinion polls, TV game shows, and even news channel opinion polls. Some of the platform’s feature include secret ballot, public poll and restricted group poll, verification based on Aadhaar and other methods, real-time display of results, real-time notification to voters and data analytics. It was founded in 2015 by Neeraj Gutgutia, a former ICICI Bank and Reliance Industries executive.
This Noida-based company was founded in 2016 by Nitin Shukla (CEO) and Raj Dubey. The firm uses blockchain technology for large-scale public use for state and national governments. It was founded in 2016 by engineer and Nitin Shukla.
This Mumbai-based company is an online database of cooks, drivers, maids and other helpers who can be hired at home and at offices. It connects helpers with customers through a digital platform. It was founded in 2014 by Meenakshi Jain, a former executive at Tata Interactive Systems and Punit Jain, formerly with Datamatics Global Services and a member of NASSCOM’s domestic market council.
