A team of young students from the Indian Institutes of Technology Delhi IITD), Roorkee (IITR), Indore (IITI); Institute of Chemical Technology Bombay (ICT) and CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute (CSIR-CFTRI) have won an innovative business idea contest .
THE CONTEST
The 24H Chrono Challenge was held this month at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune. The winners will be visiting France to participate in the final edition of the competition and explore an innovation hub in that country.
About 56 students from all over India participated from institutes such as IITs, CSIRs etc. Each team of eight students was given 24 hours to figure out an idea and establish it as a business plan with all necessary strategies like financial planning, exit strategies, marketing and sales strategy etc. Their coach was Allan Rodriques, CEO of Maker’s Asylum.
THE WINNERS
Repaul Kanji, a PhD student from IITR worked in the winning teach with two others from his institute (Vasundhara Jain, MTech scholar and Pritam Singh, PhD scholar, both from the biotechnology department). Others in the team were Anirban Kundu from IITD (MTech), Naresh Hanchate from ICT (PhD), Ankit Tiwari from IITI (PhD) and Vedashree M from CSIR-CFTRI Mysore.
Kanji’s team focused on food processing, specifically on production of turmeric powder. It takes about a month for the rhizome (underground stem) of turmeric to harden for powdering, but one of the team members had a patent which cuts this time from one month to eight hours. The residue from the powdering process is then used to make clean biofuel. “
WHAT IS 24H Entrepreneurship Challenge
‘24H Chrono de ’Entreprenariat’, is a concept created by the French National Agency for Research and Technology (ANRT) and Novancia Business School to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship among PhD students, and to equip researchers with the necessary skill sets to take their most innovative ideas from laboratory to market.
