INR 2.5 Cr funding won by Social Startups from IIITH's social incubator AIC-IIITH

• Social Startups supported by AIC-IIITH, IIITH's social incubator have won INR 2.5 Cr funding support from Government of India and showcased at various G20 startup meetings.
• Two startups from green energy and animal husbandry space have been selected for INR 1 Cr each from AIM, NITI Aayog's ANIC and accessibility tech startup for INR 50 lakhs of BIRAC's BIG grant.
• AIC-IIITH, which supports tech-based Social Startups has supported 41+ social startups and facilitated creation of 300+ jobs and INR 2+ Cr of funding.

HYDERABAD, India, March 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- We need to move toward achieving sustainable and inclusive growth to help India achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). As part of this Atal New India Challenge (ANIC) a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, has selected AIC-IIITH's Social Startups Jivoule Biofuels, a Hyderabad-based green energy company and Verdant Impact, a Jaipur-based animal husbandry platform for funding of INR 1Cr each. This amount will be disbursed after the startups successfully complete the due-diligence process.

A big part of achieving SDGs also included supporting People with Disabilities. Recognizing this, AIC-IIITH's SunQulp Tech has been selected for a grant of INR 50 Lakh from Biotech Ignition Grant (BIG), the largest early-stage biotech funding programme in India. BIG is the flagship programme of Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology.

AIC-IIITH's vision is "Catalyzing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using technology to become a thought leader in the space of technology for social impact." This aligns with ANIC's aim "to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance." Similarly BIG which seeks 'provides the right admixture of fuel and support to young startups and entrepreneurial individuals' align with AIC-IIITH's goals to "Validate prototypes and business models to help move India ahead in achieving the U.N. SDGs." Thus, AIC-IIITH's tech-based social startups are a perfect fit for these programmes.

Jivoule Biofuels founded by Chandrasekhar Nandigama is working to set up a compressed biogas plant in Hyderabad. They recently started operating a biogas-based power generation plant in Tirupur.

Verdant Impact run by Founder and CEO Manish K. Prahlad is a full-stack animal husbandry platform. The platform provides farmers with backward and forward linkages for purchase and sale of livestock and services like Animal ICU, a digital livestock healthcare ecosystem.

SunQulp started by the team of Amit Panwar (Founder) and Dushyant Kumar (Co-Founder) have created SmartVest, a low-cost, one of its kind, unique navigation solution for the visually impaired people to help them in their movement. It is a wearable vest that guides the wearer while walking by talking to them in human voice and gives them real-time information about their path and the obstacles to avoid, helping them go places with confidence.

Congratulating the Startups, Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, Director of AIC-IIITH said, "This financial investment by AIM and BIRAC in AIC-IIITH startups validates and reaffirms our approach of seeking to support the use of technology by social entrepreneurs to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges faced by India."

Jivoule Biofuels was part of AIC-IIITH'S Raftaar - Covid Acceleration Program supported by EPAM Systems as part of its ESG commitment. Verdant Impact and SunQulp Tech are part of the 3rd cohort of Akash, AIC-IIITH's Flagship Incubation Program.

AIC-IIITH's Startups Jivoule Biofuels, Verdant Impact and Next Skills 360 were also part of various G20 startup meetings organized by the government across India.

AIC-IIITH Foundation, social tech incubator of IIITH, runs multiple cohorts of social startups under various programs like Akash, flagship incubation program and Dhanush Micro Incubation program. AIC-IIITH has also run programs funded by various corporate partners like EPAM, HDFC and Pernod Ricard India Foundation, providing grants to startups. Till date AIC-IIITH has supported 41+ startups, created 300+ jobs and facilitated INR 2+ Cr of funding in diverse social impact sectors like Medtech, Agritech, Greentech, Climate, Edtech etc. AIC-IIITH startups raised INR 75+ cr in funding till date. 

About AIC-IIITH Foundation is an Atal Incubation Center set up exclusively for incubating and supporting tech-based social enterprises. It seeks to deploy entrepreneurial energy and technological innovation for social impact to help India achieve the SDGs. Supported by the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Government of India, AIC-IIITH FOUNDATION also seeks to nurture the social enterprise ecosystem by acting as a platform for sharing ideas and insights. With over 10,000 sq. ft space consisting of co-working spaces, conference room, meeting space and other facilities, AIC-IIITH FOUNDATION aims to provide collaborative space to entrepreneurs. These benefits are further enhanced by the multiplying effect of agglomeration effects and network effects of being situated in the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), IIIT-Hyderabad, which is a cluster of incubation centers, research labs and resources.

For further information, please contact at: [email protected] or For details visit our Website - https://aic.iiit.ac.in/  and for update follows us Facebook- www.facebook.com/AICIIITH Twitter- @IiithAic and LinkedIn- linkedin.com/in/aic-iiith-foundation-12ab541a1/

About CIE IIIT Hyderabad: IIIT Hyderabad is the first IIIT to be set up in the country, in 1998. IIIT Hyderabad is a research university that ranks in the country for research in various areas of computer science. IIITH also strongly emphasises on translating research into products and startups. To enable this, the Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) was set up in 2008, which has since grown to be the largest academic incubator in the country. The Centre has very active programs across the spectrum of a startup journey. Entrepreneurship courses and workshops for students, Product Labs to seed new products from research, a pre-incubation program to help entrepreneurs create new startups, incubation to nurture early-stage startups, mentoring programs to improve strategy and business development of the startups, investor pitch days, and several talks/workshops from experts and successful entrepreneurs. CIE-IIITH was supported by DST (TBI) and MeitY (TIDE) in the initial years. Today, there are very active programs focused on emerging technology startups, research-based startups, medical technologies, and social technology startups. In the past 14 years, CIE has housed over 450+ startups that have raised about 250 Cr funding and created over 2500 jobs.

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