Hyderabad: Smart city living labs at IIIT Hyderabad in association with Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and The smart city mission have launched a Smart city Startup challenge. The program is envisioned to support and scale startups that are building sustainable, inclusive and innovative solutions for smart cities. The month-long program gives selected startups an opportunity to pitch to smart city technology MNCs, smart city officials and the winner will get an equity-free grant of 10 Lakhs for further development.
Ramesh Loganathan
According to Ramesh Loganathan, Professor- Co-Innovation and Head Research/Innovation Outreach, “The Smart City Living Lab is an attempt to discover cutting edge innovations with smart city use cases and enrich them with our knowledge from research. This Startup Challenge will help discover innovations to enable Smart Cities. The winning teams will get capital, network and knowledge support.”
The focus areas for the challenge are water, waste, safety & security, health and energy. Any startups with solutions or products with smart city use cases can apply, especially tech startups working with products with smart city use cases, market ready products with or without customers (revenue is desirable), expertise in commercially deploying the solution and research with market ready products, Application deadline is 1st June 2021.Smart city technology can make cities more effective and efficient, which is necessary given the projected rapid growth in urban populations over the next few decades.
Living labs is all about using technology and data purposefully to make better decisions and deliver a better quality of life. By connecting startups with those searching for smart city solutions, the program will amplify the transformation of city infrastructure. Living Labs is also currently running the Water challenge in association with Government of Telangana & NIUM to find viable solutions to the problems faced regarding water quality, supply and non-revenue water by cities in Telangana.
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