Hyderabad: As part of the Atal New India Challenge (ANIC), NITI Aayog has selected AIC-IIITH’s social startup Jivoule Biofuels, a Hyderabad-based green energy company for funding of Rs 2.5 crore.
The firm will share the amount with Verdant Impact, a Jaipur-based animal husbandry platform after the startups successfully complete the due-diligence process.
Recognizing the efforts of AIC-IIITH in supporting disabled people, SunQulp Tech has been selected for a grant of Rs 50 lakh from the Biotech Ignition Grant (BIG), the largest early-stage biotech funding programme in India, a press note informed.
BIG is the flagship programme of the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology.
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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’.
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 and recently started operating a biogas-based power generation plant in Tirupur.
Verdant Impact run by Manish K. Prahlad is a full-stack animal husbandry platform that provides farmers with backward and forward linkages for the 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) has created SmartVest, a low-cost navigation solution for 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 the 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, the director of AIC-IIITH, Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, 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 to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges faced by India.”
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 runs multiple cohorts of social startups under various programs like Akash, the flagship incubation program, and the Dhanush Micro Incubation program.
AIC-IIITH has supported 41+ startups, created 300+ jobs, and facilitated Rs 2+ Cr of funding in diverse social impact sectors like Medtech, Agritech, Greentech, Climate, Edtech etc. AIC-IIITH startups raised Rs 75+ cr in funding to date.
