The Qualcomm Design in India Challenge (QDIC) is among the many initiatives launched by Qualcomm India to foster innovation. Launched in 2016, the challenge encourages design houses and product companies to invent useful and innovative hardware product designs by incorporating Qualcomm SoCs platforms and technologies.
Over the years, the challenge has incubated over 77+ startups that have filed over 230 patents collectively, launched 25+ products commercially, and raised over $165 million in capital through various stages of funding. Six startups have made successful exits via M&A. Startups have built smart and connected devices and products in the domains like smart infrastructure, AgriTech, Industrial automation, Wearables, Medical technology, and Rural IoT. This year marks the seventh edition of the initiative where the challenge invited applications focused on 5G use cases, health tech, and mobile edge-compute as well.
The challenge QDIC received 145 applications through outreach partnerships with NASSCOM CoE-IoT and Startup India, and 12 startups were selected for the cohort through a jury selection process.
The 12 startups selected at QDIC 2022 are:
1. React Labs – Founded by IIT Bombay alumni and ex-Chief of Staff at Ather Energy Mahek Mody and ex-head of engineering at Chaayos Mohit Sharma, React Labs is India’s first D2C smart home appliance brand, with their maiden product R1, which has been designed to transform the modern Indian households.
2. TechEagle Innovations – TechEagle Innovations aims at creating safe, secure, and reliable on-demand drone logistics airlines for medical, parcel, and essential items. Founded by Vikram Singh Meena and Anshu Abhishek in 2015, the drone logistics startup has made last-mile goods (healthcare products, food, parcels, etc.) delivery possible via drones.
3. Niral Networks – Founded by Abhijit Chaudhary and Dr Inder Gopal, Niral Networks aims to democratise 5G and Edge networking infrastructure by providing 5G infrastructure as a service for last-mile connectivity in enterprise, defense, rural, agriculture, mining, etc using open and disaggregated Network Operating System called NiralOS integrated with COTS hardware.
4. Coratia Technologies – Revolutionising underwater inspection, Coratia Technologies develops and provides customised solutions (such as products, integrated solution packages and consultancy services) in the field of AUVs and ROVs operations. NIT Rourkela alumnus and classmates Debendra Pradhan and Biswajit Swain formed this innovation with an aim to reduce the costs linked to underwater operations and inspection.
5. Fleetrf – Fleetrf deals in aviation and aerospace component manufacturing. The brainchild of Sunil Aggarwal and Dr Nitin Kumar, it enables efficient and advanced operational profiles for unmanned aircraft via systems that decrease operator workload, use co-operative multi-node networks, and offer wider environmental range.
6. Ayur.AI – Realising evidence-based Ayurveda for personalised health, wellness and P5 Medicine, Chennai-based Ayur.AI integrates Ayurveda with AI for the next-generation health and wellness, and has been conceptualised by Dr Bala Pesala, Dr Prathiban Rengarajan, and Dr Surendra Gupta.
7. Sparcolife Digital Healthcare Technologies – Formed by Pooja HS and Gopinath V, Sparcolife is an applied behavioural sciences company working on multimodal diagnostics and multisensory digital therapeutics to enable the adoption of integrated behavioural care. The platform blends care for medical conditions and related behavioural-mental health factors that affect the patient’s overall health and well-being.
8. TeraLumen Solutions – A startup founded by Dr Jyotirmayee Dash and Dr Shaumik Ray, TeraLumen Solutions aims to develop novel medical devices using Multispectral Technology (Terahertz and mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy techniques) for breast cancer margin detection.
9. Aerobiosys Innovations – Co-founded in 2019 by Rajesh Yadav and Cyril Anthony, Aerobiosys Innovations aims to develop affordable life-saving medical equipment with advanced technologies for hospitals, medical institutions, and individual practitioners.
10. Brainalive – Abbas Mehdi and Gaurav Dubey’s Brainalive aims to improve user engagement in online learning/webinars/meeting through detecting, reasoning and determining the causality of user engagement using data-driven innovative tech.
11. EyeROV Technologies – Founded by IIT Alumnus Johns T Mathai and Kannappa Palaniappan P, EyeROV Technologies envisions to become a technology leader and solution provider in underwater critical infrastructure inspections and surveys,.
12. Newndra Innovations – Newndra Innovations is known for offering efficient, lightweight, and carbon-negative exoskeletons at revolutionary prices to increase the well-being of the elderly and the productivity of workers while reducing fatigue and musculoskeletal disorders.
The selected startups will get access to a plethora of benefits, including dedicated engineering support to develop their prototypes, access to a state of the art innovation lab in Bangalore, in-depth mentoring workshops, events participation opportunities, an incubation grant of Rs 3.2 lakh, patent filing incentive of up to Rs 3.2 lakh, access to an Innovation Commercialization Fund (ICF) of Rs 60 lakh, and opportunity to win Rs 1.5 crore in prize money.
IIT Madras’ Combustion Research Centre is quickly becoming India’s premier deeptech startup hub
In the 1930s, a group of students at the California Institute of Technology blew up part of a building while experimenting with rocket fuels. Instead of censuring them, the institute moved the self-acclaimed ‘rocket boys’ to a nearby empty field to conduct research, laying the foundation for the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).
Regarded as a premier centre for the development of cutting-edge technology, JPL has worked on everything from missiles during World War II to rockets during America’s space race with Russia. Among other projects, it does pioneering work on inter-planetary travel today.
According to satellite startup Galaxeye’s founder Suyash Singh, IIT Madras’ National Center for Combustion Research & Development (NCCRD) is also in the same league as JPL for its ground-breaking work across multiple deeptech fields.
With NCCRD providing the launch pad for at least seven deeptech startups since 2016, he may have a point.
Professor Satya Chakravarthy, the ‘rocket boy’ of the NCCRD
“The NCCRD has a lot of industry relevance, and it’s a great place to do a lot of research. That’s why I relate it to JPL,” Suyash tells YourStory. “I always told Professor Satya that we should work more on promotional activities. But he’s very deep tech and won’t boast [about all the work being done].”
Satyanarayanan R Chakravarthy, better known as Satya, joined the IIT Madras Department of Aerospace Engineering as a visiting faculty in 1997, before working his way up to become a professor by 2009. With over 75 studies published in international journals and 230 papers produced for national and international conferences, he is seen as a global expert in the field of combustion.
However, the government’s decision to award Rs 90 crore for a pioneering combustion centre at IIT Madras ten years ago altered the course of his career dramatically. From an academic focussed on research, Satyanarayanan moved to develop deeptech solutions for real-world problems, especially since the NCCRD was inaugurated in 2017.
“[The NCCRD] is his brainchild. He fought to build that centre for five to six years,” says Suyash. “He’s optimised it [for maximum productivity and projects] in a way that SpaceX would have done, and I’ve been to SpaceX.”
From industrial projects to startups
The NCCRD was originally set up to provide a large-scale research and development facility for massive global industrial projects. Whether working on automotive, aerospace, or energy-related problems, the NCCRD was built to foster academic-industrial networks and strengthen India’s deeptech ecosystem.
NCCRD has been successful in this principle, having worked with the likes of GE Aviation and Siemens on multiple projects, bringing in over Rs 200 crore in revenue. The institute has deployed the capital to set up equipment to be used for faculty and student projects.
However, Satyanarayanan soon realised why startups have a place in the business world.
“Large hardware companies are not really good at absorbing innovation very quickly,” Satyanarayanan says. “That was the motivation to startup. At a startup, it’s possible to push through innovation very quickly and get small products out.”
Today, all projects applying to work at the NCCRD have to fulfill three basic startup criteria beyond their technical expertise. All projects must have a clear idea of their market, must be building for a big enough market, and must understand what the problem in that market is that it can solve for, and thereby grow its business at an exponential rate.
Bitten by the startup bug
By introducing the concept of market relevance to the research conducted at the NCCRD, Satyanarayanan kick-started a startup revolution. However, he did not just produce bureaucratic guidelines and leave projects to fend for themselves.
Galaxeye founder Suyash Singh, who has been around the NCCRD since it was inaugurated due to his work on a hyperloop student project under Satyanarayanan, says that the companies and the NCCRD have learned the art of business development together.
While most universities today have startup incubation support that helps aspiring student entrepreneurs, they are usually incorporating well-known ideas for tech, and specifically SaaS, projects. However, the NCCRD has a hands-on approach towards building customer development templates to identify markets for deeptech firms specifically.
“How do you put a customer discovery framework together for a deep tech startup, around a satellite or a rocket?” asks Suyash. “The core idea, the motivation, was always with Professor Satya. He will always push to understand whether there is a requirement…there has to be some validation, and some direction to head to first.”
For Galaxeye specifically, working with NCCRD support made its founders realise that its potential customers have not “played around with the physics” and do not understand how the startup’s solutions could help them.
That was a new form of customer validation not covered by traditional startup principles, and has helped multiple NCCRD startups raise funding and go out into the world, including 3D rocket engine builder Agnikul Cosmos, micro gas turbine producer Aerostrovilos Energy, and urban waste-to-fuel developer X2Fuels, among others.
Satyanarayanan has not been spared the startup bug either. Not only does he play a close developmental role with each startup, but he has seen his award-winning student hyperloop project turn into the startup TuTr, and has himself gone on a teaching sabbatical since 2020 to build an unmanned air taxi firm called
The funding environment and future hopes for the NCCRD
Currently, the NCCRD provides deeptech support for its startups, not to mention access to world-class facilities, a faculty with personal interest in the projects, shared workspace with researchers from global industry giants, and some investment from the IIT-Madras incubation cell.
According to Suyash, investors who have heard of the NCCRD are extremely enthusiastic about its projects. Speciale Invest, a deeptech-focussed VC fund that has invested in at least four NCCRD startups, echoes this sentiment.
“When we see startups working out of NCCRD, we are inclined to believe that the tech has gone through the rigours of early validation,” says Vishesh Rajaram, partner at Speciale Invest. “NCCRD’s track record of solving dozens of industry problems has essentially created an entrepreneurial aura. The researchers are thinking of not only the technological challenges but also how this solves a real-life problem in the industry.”
However, Suyash points out that NCCRD would take another step if it could find sustainable growth investment opportunities directed at their startups. While Galaxeye will always have a research based at the center due to the opportunities it provides, the company has had to move its base of operations to Bengaluru to address some infrastructural, employment and supply chain issues.
Professor Satya understands and agrees with the need for turning NCCRD into a full-fledged incubator with growth stage potential for their startups, but for now he is focussed on The ePlane Company and his many other pre-existing responsibilities to the center.
“At some point, I will probably become old enough to be ineffective at ePlane, so the ePlane board will probably chuck me out,” says the professor with a laugh. “Then I’ll come back and say let’s actually do a startup home in a more formal structure.”
Until then, the NCCRD will have to make do with averaging just one world class deeptech startup a year.
Bullish on Bharat: Here’s how Adda247 is helping Indian youth land their dream ‘Sarkari’ jobs
The intangible something in startups, the soul of it can often be sensed by founders. This fosters a sense of deep connection and mutual purpose. As long as the spirit persists, startups remain agile and innovative, spurring growth.
As a business matures, it’s hard to keep the soul or the spirit of the startup alive.
But this is where Anil Nagar from Dankaur, UP and Saurabh Bansal from Tinsukia, Assam, founders of Adda247 have chosen to differ. The duo launched Career Power in 2010 to provide offline coaching classes to students. The company gradually became one of the fastest growing and most successful enterprises across the educational industry with a pan-India presence.
The company underwent a significant transition in 2016 when it shifted to an online learning platform under the name . Plugging the gap with respect to access and quality of education, Adda247 is now India’s leading test prep platform catering to the learning needs of approximately 85 million+ government job aspirants across the country, providing vernacular content at affordable prices.
From one centre in Noida to 100+ centres across India
After cracking the IIT JEE exam, Anil pursued B.Tech from IIT BHU. During the process, he realised how difficult it is for a student from a small town to crack these exams with absolutely no guidance. “The quality of primary school education is poor. Many do not get equal opportunities to move ahead in life. After studying at IIT, I worked in the corporate sector for a few years. But, whenever I visited my village, I wanted to do something for people coming from smaller towns,” shares Anil.
While his passion for democratising education always shaped Nagar’s professional choices, it was only in 2015 that things took a turn. When he visited a family wedding in his village Dankaur, he recognised the bride from school. “It was disheartening to see a bright student discontinue her education due to lack of financial support,” he recalls.
Letting go of cushy corporate jobs, Anil and Saurabh decided to start teaching students. They launched Career Power to help government exam aspirants with offline coaching classes. The growth of Career Power led to the opening of numerous centres across India. But the founders quickly realised that reaching people in small pockets required them to go online since the lack of quality test prep was still a major hindrance for many.
“The soft launch of Reliance Jio in December 2015 opened up huge possibilities. We knew internet services would be more affordable and accessible for people in small towns. And students could prepare for exams by leveraging online channels,” shares Saurabh Bansal, Co-founder and COO, Adda247.
Adda247 was launched in 2016 with the sole aim of making quality education and resources accessible and affordable to people in Tier-II, III cities across the country.
“All our offerings are focused on ‘Building for Bharat’ as 85 percent of our user base are from Tier II, III, IV cities. We want to help create a level playing field by providing different types of learning solutions to students from all kinds of backgrounds. The company aims to democratise education by being accessible and affordable to the youth of Bharat,” shares Anil.
Live classes in regional languages
Live classes are imparted by full-time teachers, and the learning experience is owned by Adda247 end-to-end, as opposed to having part-time/ freelance teachers or a marketplace model for engaging teaching staff.
“We entered the vernacular space in early 2020 when we launched our courses in four languages — Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali. Vernacular as a vertical has grown very rapidly in our company. Currently, we cater to 12 languages and almost all exams in more than 15 states. Our user base in the vernacular segment has grown by more than 10x in the last year,” reveals Anil.
Adda247 is one of very few profitable and sustainable edtech companies growing rapidly in India. But, the growth of the company has not affected the quality of education they offer. To date, what drives the organisation is the love for teaching and the will to bring about change.
Overcoming challenges in the online test prep space
The move from offline to online is a major decision the founders took in their entrepreneurial journey. In 2016, there were 100 branches of Career Power in all the major cities in India. Since the vision was to empower more people, the shift to online was inevitable. Adda247 was started from scratch after Career Power, with a new office and a new team.
The edtech company is neither an online extension of Career Power nor a pivot from its offline format. Both brands currently operate under the parent company, Metis Eduventures.
Initial funding was an issue for the team. “It was very difficult since our experience was in offline education and most of the funding was going to online or tech-driven businesses. We had to convince investors that we will be able to build a successful online business just like we had offline,” shares Saurabh.
When it came to building tech and product teams, the organisation required extremely qualified people but it was a challenge to get them to work for Adda247 since they had established themselves as offline players with Career Power.
Saurabh explains that initially the team could bring in a lot of organic traffic to their web/app but conversions were poor. The founders took a two-way approach — they worked on building a highly engaging product with a lot of free content along with paid courses.
“Most of our audience was from smaller towns and villages, they did not understand the product fully since most of the users were first-time buyers of online courses. They needed help in understanding the product, benefits and comparison with competitors,” says Saurabh.
To solve this, we created a strong counselling team, which guided users on taking the right decision in terms of purchasing our products. This worked for us. Our conversion rate increased by more than 5x,” he adds.
Adda247 offers online courses for more than 500+ exams in India including UPSC, State PSCs, Banking, SSC, Teaching, Defense, State Exams, JEE, NEET, GATE, and CUET in 12 languages.
Acquisitions and growth
Anil highlighted how the organisation has been doing really well in national-level exams and state exams and was still in the initial phases of building the UPSC category. “We realised the UPSC is a very serious category and aspirants generally prepare for 2-3 years before their first attempt. With this, we also realised that it will take a lot of time for us if we want to build the category on our own. Then we came across StudyIQ Education — which is the largest edtech company focussed on UPSC and State PSC in terms of users. StudyIQ YouTube channel has more than 12 million subscribers and produces very refined and high-quality content for UPSC exams,” adds Anil.
Adda247 acquired Study IQ education platform in December 2021. The acquisition was a strategic move to strengthen their offering in UPSC and State PSCs verticals.
The majority of new users reach Adda247 through websites/blogs or YouTube channels, and students buy and consume content mostly on their mobile app. “Last month, we had more than 22 million users who visited our websites/blogs and more than 200 million views on our YouTube channels,” says Saurabh.
Since many of the new verticals have been started in the last 1-2 years, Anil and Saurabh’s focus for next year is to grow them. In the coming year, vernacular State Exams and UPSC are two major focus areas for Adda247.
“We need to invest a lot in building cutting-edge technology, product differentiation, and content creation. It will give us a huge competitive edge in the long term,” says Anil.
This EV startup is on a mission to reduce carbon emissions by electrifying last-mile delivery
Founded in 2017, Electric is one of the unsung heroes of the electric vehicle (EV) generation. As a last-mile delivery provider, its IoT-powered EVs are engaged in delivering daily essentials, such as vegetables, medicines, dairy, groceries etc. Zypp Electric, like most other delivery and logistics players, follows an asset-light model and uses EV-as-a-Service platform, with a mission to make last-mile logistics sustainable and emission free. With 10 hubs across India and having deployed over 7,000 EVs, making 40,000 deliveries per day across six cities and serving 25+ merchants, the list of milestones achieved by this young startup is phenomenal.
After having managed to save 17 million kg of carbon emissions till date, Akash Gupta, CEO and Co-founder, Zypp Electric says, “We aim to make every last-mile delivery go carbon-free thus empowering the logistics industry with a sustainable ecosystem of EVs and achieving the goal of Mission Zero Emission by 2030. We have a 7000+ active fleet growing month on month on a path to onboard 1,00,000 EVs by 2024, which speaks volumes of our strategy to make our vision come true.”
E-retail is likely to grow from USD 30 billion to USD 150 billion by 2025. The increasing consumer base of online shoppers will contribute significantly to the market growth. This spurt is expected to increase the demand for last-mile delivery. Reports suggest that Flipkart intends to replace 40 percent of its delivery fleet very soon. Amazon India is likely to include nearly 10,000 EVs in its delivery fleet by 2025. Delhi government’s recent policy mandate instructs the logistics companies and aggregators to go 100 percent electric by 2025.
With many e-retailers, both big and small, implementing environment-friendly and sustainable technologies based on electric mobility, this Gurugram-based startup is tapping into the growing opportunities in the last-mile e-commerce delivery market. With prominent clients like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, PharmEasy, Delhivery, Swiggy, Zomato, Zepto, and Blinkit already in its kitty, it is working with several OEM partners like Hero Electric and Sun Mobility to buy, rent, and lease vehicles specifically suited for last-mile delivery.
Meet the founders
Akash Gupta, the Co-founder and CEO with almost 14 years of work experience, was previously the head of marketing at Mobikwik, ex- Snapdeal, ex-Airtel, ex-Dell, and ex-Infosys. Akash speaks passionately about delivery, startups, and electric vehicles.
Rashi Agarwal, Co-founder and CBO is a hustler, a fighter, and a serial entrepreneur. An eternal optimist, she has dreamt of making a difference in the world and this startup is her mission to achieve a clean world.
Tushar Mehta, Co-founder and COO, holds an excellent track record in building multi-million-dollar consumer internet and technology-driven businesses, while scaling it profitably and building a strong multi-functional team.
How Zypp plans to disrupt the market
With Zypp aggressively engaged in IoT, EV data, battery and delivery, the company is looking at fleet management technology, cross utilisation technology, creation of a charging infrastructure, and warehousing technology. The startup is actively eyeing upon the future with blockchain in logistics, drone deliveries, and autonomous deliveries.
With API integration, live AI-enabled chat support for customer and delivery executives, Zypp offers upto 20 percent saving on customer delivery. It offers an advanced dashboard for order placement/ tracking, 99 percent on-time SLAs, and an in-depth analytics and live feed of deliveries to the customer.
What’s more, as a likely entrant into drone deliveries, it is leveraging technology supported by ML-enabled invoice and logo reading, reading customer location for accurate delivery. There will be an entry into autonomous deliveries, optimising cost/delivery via data, followed by AI-enabled rider route optimisation, tracking delivery/hour to drive hourly utilisation, COD handling and management.
That apart, it offers a provision for reading rider driving behaviour, a real-time highly accurate location of delivery personnel, thus, creating a rider credit score. There is timely assistance on battery charge/swap, RRT assistance for breakdown, and bike maintenance support. Zypp also monitors idle time of vehicles, remote immobilisation, geo fencing, creating vehicle life data, which is shared with OEMs.
Given that going electric is the way forward for logistics companies, the future looks bright for Zypp Electric. With a USD 30 million expansion plan, Zypp is well-positioned towards building India’s largest EV logistics tech company.
Assistive Technology: Exploring the opportunities and challenges the sunrise sector offers
A recent WHO-UNICEF report reveals that more than 2.5 billion globally are in need of atleast one Assistive Technology (AT) product, such as hearing aids, wheelchairs, or programs that help with communication. This number is expected to rise to over 3.5 billion by 2050. Moreover over 1 billion people who need an AT product lack any access to them or at best have minimal access. An overwhelming majority of people who do not have access to AT products reside in middle- and lower-income countries, where economic deprivation presents an additional barrier to overcome.
While these numbers may appear disheartening at first glance, they also indicate the immense, untapped market potential in this space. Thus far, the AT sector has been driven primarily by charitable initiatives, which while beneficial, have not been able to create a sustainable model for AT innovation and access. It has not received substantial investor interest as it has been traditionally seen as a financially unviable sector. This in turn has restricted the pace of innovation in the sector and pushed up the costs of AT products out of reach of a majority of people who need them.
Massive opportunity for entrepreneurs
Another recent study estimates that the AT sector’s global market revenue was USD 21.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to USD 28.8 billion by 2028. These numbers however reflect only the projections based on current market size. Innovation in AT products could lead to the creation of entirely new market segments which could further increase the potential market size to hundreds of billions of dollars.
To increase access, reduce the cost of AT products, and spur innovation, it is necessary to create a market-led ecosystem where innovators see adequate financial and commercial incentives to engage with the sector. Helping create sustainable businesses is the most efficient way of expanding the accessibility and reach of AT products. It is also important to see the AT space as a single global market, as most products are easily replicable across countries. This allows products developed in one market, such as India, to be sold across the world. Seeing the global AT market as one single market addresses the question of the sector’s financial viability by recognising that an AT product could be used by anyone anywhere with only the smallest of modifications. There is therefore true potential in the AT becoming a sunrise sector.
Investors, including Private Equity and Venture Capital funds, can be at the forefront of this change by not only providing adequate funding but also leveraging their experience gained in other sectors to hand-hold budding entrepreneurs in the AT sector in creating viable, impactful businesses.
A prime example of this is the Prosus Social Impact Challenge for Accessibility (SICA). Currently in its third edition, Prosus SICA aims to nurture a growing, viable AT sector in India by providing both necessary funding and mentorship to the most innovative AT startups in India and help take them global. The success of the Prosus SICA startups, including Thinkerbell Labs, Stamurai, and Neomotion among others, over the last two editions is testament to the fact that if provided with the necessary financial and business help, AT startups can in fact create products that can improve the daily lives of millions of people while still being financially sustainable. It is necessary for more such programs to be created and led by investors across the world for the global AT space to reach its true potential and for billions of people to lead better lives.
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