The past five months have been a learning like no other. Every business, small or big, has been compelled to think out of the box to ensure their own survival. Specifically, the chatter around Industry 4.0 and building the factory of the future has sped up to become a decisive issue among industries today that determines their sustenance in the future. Pivoting to a digital-first strategy is imperative and the sooner companies adopt a digital-first strategy, the better off they are.

Now this is easier said than done, of course. Industry leaders have a plethora of use cases, and are constantly on the lookout for solution providers. Meanwhile, tech startups today are highly competent and are working on a suite of digital solutions that are agile and scalable. However, they seek data and an opportunity to scale. What both sides require is a conduit that can connect them, so they can explore how they can complement one another.

NASSCOM CoE presents the Manufacturing Innovation Challenge 2020, a premier platform fostering the collaboration of industry leaders & startups to bring about a digital shift. Quick implementations of innovative solutions has become the need of the hour, and deeply collaborative models are going to be the new trend in industries. Enterprises are adopting such readymade platforms to catalyse their digital transformation journey. In partnership with Industry, the core team at NASSCOM CoE driving innovation in manufacturing is offering a rare opportunity for startups.

In conjunction with industry, three use cases have been shortlisted for this programme:

• Workers health and safety – Solution to promote safety of workers in large plants by enabling physical location tracking , health vitals monitoring , hazardous area alerts, fall /immobility detection , emergency SOS, etc for workers
• Predictive maintenance of high value assets – Predicting failure within a given time window, of operating equipment in manufacturing plant, in the challenging scenario of complex sequential dependencies between the equipment.
• 360° Virtual Tour of plant – A 360° site virtual tour for providing a unique and exciting experience of site walk around, without having a physical tour to the huge site of many acres, which will also prevents the physical site visit of outsiders into the site

Startups are encouraged to solve any of these challenges by submitting a proposal. The strongest contender gets an opportunity to work on a remunerative Proof of Concept with an industry leader and  a one-year membership to the NASSCOM CoE Acceleration Program.

“It’s exciting to have senior industry leaders from large manufacturing companies and academia coming forward to support the MIC2020. Considering this challenge will attract best of the start-ups from country and to ensure there is comprehensive evaluation process.”

• Amit Saluja, Sr Director & Vertical Head, Manufacturing, NASSCOM CoE  

NASSCOM has assembled a strong panel of experts from diverse background as its main jury:

• Saurabh Gaur, Joint Secretery, Meity
• Sachin Gusia IRS, Managing Director, Gujarat Informatics Limited, DST, Govt of Gujarat
• Amit Saluja, Sr Director & Manufacturing Vertical Head, NASSCOM CoE Gandhinagar
• Naveen Sharma, Sr. Vice President (Works), JK Lakshmi Cement Ltd.
• K R Venkatadri, Chief Innovation & Digital Officer, Tata Chemicals Ltd
• Jitendra Bakliwal, Digital Transformation Lead, Product Supply APAC, Bayer
• Amita Mirajkar, Co-founder and CEO, Clairvoyant India Pvt. Ltd
• Naveen Pilania, Operational Excellence Leas, Zydus Cadila Healthcare Ltd.
• R A Venkitachalam, Advisor, Industry Relations, IIT Gandhinagar
• Digvijay Singh, Chief Operating Officer, Indian Angel Network
• Rajib Das, Enterprise Architecture Leader – Digital Transformation, Kimberly-Clark Corporation
• Atul Govil, Chief Transformation Officer & Head Technology, India Glycols Ltd
• Geeta Gurnani, Director, ISV and Next Generation Partnerships, Microsoft

In addition, a panel of mentors have been assembled too – these include a cross section of academia and industry members, who can advise start-ups on any technical challenges, feasibility of the solution and bringing in innovation element in the proposal.

• Shanmuganathan Raman, IIT Gandhinagar
• Dr Madhu Vadali, IIT Gandhinagar
• HSP Nagashayanam, Bayer CropScience
• Krunal Prajapati, Bayer CropScience
• Prasanna Wadke, Tata Chemicals Ltd.
• Deepak Sharma, JK Lakshmi Cement Ltd.
• Preeti Mathur, Udaipur Cement Works Ltd.

The last date to apply for startups is July 29th, 2020. Register Now – https://gujarat.coe-iot.com/manufacturing-innovation-challenge-2020/

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