Winners Share The Joy Of Bagging The Coveted Competition For Startups #WISC2016
WIEF is one of the largest and most prestigious India-focused economic and business conferences in the world. The Wharton India Startup Competition (WISC) is a hallmark of WIEF, giving startups from India the opportunity to present in front of an esteemed panel of judges. We have brought you the list of finalists and winners with their quotes after sweeping the judges of off their feet.
Note: Each startup got 5 mins to pitch to the jury. All the ten startups won mentorship from InnoVen Capital.
JUDGES: Kartik Srivatsa, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Aspada Investment Advisors; Kartik Hosanagar, Professor, The Wharton School; Bharati Jacob, Co-founder, Seedfund; Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix Partners India; Rajul Garg, Serial Entrepreneur & Investor.
Winner of Final Award - $12,000, Winner of Legal Advice
“Industries (Oil, Gas, Chemical & Nuclear), have huge assets that are required to be monitored. Pipeline being the greatest assets turn out to be the greatest danger as well. Pipeline leaks lead to huge productivity loss, environmental damage and worst of all; the loss of life. This happens because no technology exists today that can perform online monitoring of these pipelines in high temperatures. That’s where Detect comes in. We have come up with patented technology for the first sensor in the word that can monitor pipelines at the temperatures therefore preventing leaks,” Daniel Raj David, CEO, Co-Founder.
After winning the Final Award Daniel shared, “I missed my flight from Chennai. Somewhere I felt that I should not miss this opportunity and I booked another flight. It’s good to see and reaffirm that investors can see what our vision is; it is really reassuring.
Winner of People’s Choice Award - $6,000 & Winner of Legal Advice
Mr. Ankit Agarwal of HelpUsGreen emphasized, “Over 80,00,000 metric tonnes of waste flowers are dumped into the Ganges every year and toxic ingredients like Arsenic, Lead and Cadmium which are used in growing flowers, mixes with the river water making it highly poisonous. As a result, the lives of around 400 million people are affected by these major pollutants. We, at HelpUsGreen, are trying to recycle that and prevent the inhabitants from contracting severe diseases which in turn are the leading causes of child mortality in India and Bangladesh in the process of providing employment to manual scavengers, the most disadvantaged community in India.”
After winning in the category of People’s Choice Award, Ankit shared, “We have been to many startup competitions before, but WIEF had the toughest selection procedure. Before this I had three interviews which were almost one and a half hour long, the second round was absolutely grilling and by the end of the third round we were selected. This is one of the best in the country and it helps us to understand that yes, we’re on the right track.”
Won Mentorship from Unilaser Fund
“Kings Learning focuses on the access to the English language training. English is the language of business. But most people don’t have access to the language. We help bridge the gap through king learning and edguru (app). Our mobile app is available in 28 languages, it is completely adaptive and based on the learner’s performance it adapts and is industry specific be it at an entry level for hospitality, finance etc.” Arshad points out.
CropIn
Talking about his venture, Mr. Krishna Kumar (Founder & CEO of CropIn) remarked, “Farming, as we all know, has always been a ‘learn from your father or learn by doing it yourself or from fellow farmers’ industry. But, we need to adopt the new learning and changes fast for profitable and sustainable farming. In farming, many important decisions are made through intuition and not based on data. Also, despite being one of the world’s largest and most important industries, it has been underserved by information technology companies. That’s how CropIn happened.”
“We feel Eckovation is changing education. Strongly believing in the concept of collaborative education, which builds experience and enhances the quality of learning, our platform has already brought positive change in the way education is delivered using smartphones. More than 10K educators and 300K learners in less than a year have given a great proof to that”, added Mr. Ritesh Singh (Co-Founder & CEO of Eckovation)
Believing in changing the lives of those around us, Nilay Desai of Nonspec quipped, “We notice several hundred thousand amputations every year due to injury, infection, diseases, and individuals from developing nations are unable to bear the cost of a prosthetic. Looking at amputation, it is always a difficult experience, particularly when it occurs in the life of a child— the loss of a limb can change both the physical and emotional development of the patient with repercussions that last a lifetime. To provide solutions to such critical problems, Nonspec was formed.”
“We are an in-game advertising platform that helps brands to engage users on mobile, publishers to monetize their games and gamers to enjoy games without ads interrupting their experience. We are working with more than 30 game developers, 75 brands ad reaching more than 40 million monthly active users,” says Founder Arpit Jain.
“WIEF has provided us with a deeper validation of our business by showcasing and providing feedback from a variety of experts. The forum has given us a platform to discuss ideas, showcase our business to top VCs and getting expert advice for long term sustainability and growth,” CEO Avira Tharakan.
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5 Oct 2014 -
11 Jun 2016
