IBM Smartcamp for Deeptech successfully showcases top 10 startups with meaningful innovations and disruptive technologies

This story is sponsored by IBM

The IBM Smartcamp for Deep Tech organised by the IBM Global Entrepreneur program was held recently and proved to be phenomenally successful. The event saw several startups with innovative and disruptive technologies across areas like IoT, Big Data & Analytics, Security, Storage, BI, Mobile, Cognitive & Machine Learning, Blockchain, Social, Infrastructure Services Management and Cloud from across India vying for the top spot. The following startups were among those who made it to the Top 10 list.

Fluid AI

Organisations today are facing a massive challenge in managing customers interactions efficiently and quickly. This startup’s Artificial Intelligence solution can replace people and do everything that a person can do in a more efficient and engaging way.

Serving as a seamless layer of interaction, this solution reduces the need for people in stores while also allowing customers to undertake transactions and interact with them 24 x7. The comprehensive solution comes with voice recognition and completely customised software along with hardware. The use of AI substantially enhances customer experience while at the same time allowing a much more natural interaction using voice and gestures, which ensures high engagement.

Staqu Technologies

This startup’s solution helps ease search of unstructured products (which don't have uniform nomenclature), derive trend analyses for fashion products and generate automated product descriptions in the e-commerce space. They have partnered with leading Indian mobile companies to assist their users to take informed decisions when buying something online from their phone, by integrating smart recommendation systems deep beneath the mobile OS. At the same time, they use the data to extract user behaviour and build cross-platform recommendation engines specific to each user, which could be used by e-commerce companies to recommend the right product to the target user.

Appiyo Technologies Pvt Ltd

In the near future, information consumers will want to transact, access information and perform their enterprise functions using messaging in the future. Here is where Actionable Instant Messaging (AIM) comes in. This disruptive technology will give these consumers an opportunity to perform all their day to day computing operations using a single mobile application. This startup’s platform provides for a BOT on the cloud which can interpret actionable content from mobile messengers and integrate/communicate the same with a computing backbone. They have 6 patents under their belt,

SigTuple Technologies Pvt Ltd

The disparity in the number of patients, especially in India’s rural areas, and the number of doctors who can attend to them is growing. This startup is working on bridging a part of this growing gap by enabling tele-pathology/tele-ophthalmology/tele-radiology by using the latest advances in AI, statistical models and advanced image processing. Through their intelligent screening solutions they enable the implementation of a hub and spoke model where the medical experts can be in the hub and the patients can be in any location. From samples provided at the spoke locations, a detailed report along with visual evidence is made available to the medical experts in the hub who then review the report and make it available for the patient.

Merxius

Current tools that are used for Virtual Reality are technical and require specialized coding knowledge - effectively putting them out of reach of everyday users. Merxius’s solution RED aims to fill the gap that enables widespread adoption of Virtual Reality.

Designed to be intuitive and simple for all users, RED is interoperable with almost all major 3D formats which makes it easier for users to plug into any authoring pipeline. It also comes with a low learning curve as it has built in templates for different use cases such as architecture, engineering, visualization. Users can select a template, import a 3D model and directly publish a VR experience. Other than this, RED can output to all major platforms including mobile, desktop and head mounted.

GenCrunch STPL

Bill data is the most underused data available across all spending channels amongst small to medium retailers. This startup uses this data to helps retail chains reduce their costs, increase their footfalls and sales, having identified customers for targeted campaigns through data analytics. The solution takes less than two hours to deploy per store location and immediately starts gathering every bill generated data, while continuing to analyse customers’ spends across the network.

Emotix

Children today spend a large amount of time in front of screens and interface with technology from a young age. Research indicates that more than 80 per cent of Indian children in middle class urban homes are well-versed with smartphones. With nuclear families becoming more of a norm than joint families, parents have a tough time keeping their children engaged.

This is where Miko, India’s first companion robot, is hoping to make a difference. Developed by a team of roboticists, academicians, and neuropsychologists, Miko is an emotionally intelligent robot who is capable of engaging, educating, and entertaining a child in a trusted environment, and has the potential to address social challenges faced by Indian families.

Clean Slate Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

With over 82 per cent smartphone users known to consult their smartphones before making offline purchase decisions, retailers, e-tailers, O2O players and marketers increasingly want to engage with the consumers near or inside the stores through the smartphone to drive purchases and improve customer experience.

This startup’s platform solves the problem of closing the online to offline attribution loop and proximity marketing for retailers, hyperlocal services and O2O services. Its indoor location proximity platform detects the presence and behaviour of smartphones inside any indoor venue to trigger pre-programmed actions which can deliver contextual and personalised experiences.

KrypC Technologies Pvt Ltd

While Blockchain has been accepted as the next big thing, the complex adoption procedures are creating a hurdle. This startup’s solution makes it easier for organisations to adopt Blockchain seamlessly

The solution, KrypCore, solves the problem by enabling business users to create a distributed business application with minimal programming effort, integrating existing or creating new legally valid identity layers, integrating existing LoB applications, collecting vendor data, among others.

NeuroEquilibrium Diagnostic Systems Pvt Ltd

This startup is helping set up the first chain of specialised vertigo and dizziness clinics in the world. There are 60 million vertigo patients in India alone. They have developed four diagnostic systems for evaluation of dizziness and balance disorders, and developed a vertigo assessment platform where all patient data is on the cloud.

They are setting up specialised vertigo & dizziness clinics in collaboration with leading ENT & neurology clinics, with 12 such clinics which leverage cloud technology for remote diagnosis & treatment already operational, including one in Cyprus. More than 1,400 patients have already been diagnosed and treated through the platform. This is also the only company which is developing AI for diagnosis of vertigo and dizziness patients, and among the very few centres globally developing a virtual reality platform for vestibular rehabilitation.

IBM Smartcamp for Deep Tech

After going through hundreds of applications, 30 startups were shortlisted. The IBM team conducted interviews and went through demos following which the Top 10 were finalised. Every finalist had 30 minutes to present to the judges and take them through a demo.

The judges included noted VCs and top IBM executives including Vani Kola, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital; Sanjay Mehta, one of the top 10 angel investors in India; Willie Tejada, IBM Chief Developer Advocate, IBM Digital Business Group; Anil Joshi, Founder, Unicorn Ventures; Sateesh Andra, Co Founder, Endya Ventures; Dulles Krishnan, Director, IBM Commerce, APAC; Samir Kumar , Managing Director, Inventus Venture; Ranjeeth Menon, Executive Director, IDG Ventures; Denny Kurien, President, Kieretsu Forum, Bangalore Chapter and Rema Subramanium, Co Founder, Ankur Capital.

In the evening, the teams presented to a panel of 15 CIOs in the presence of over 200 people in the audience. Based on the scores from the morning and evening panels, the top 3 winners were declared with Fluid AI in the 1^st place, Emotix as the 1^st runner-up and Sigtuple Technologies as 2nd runner-up.

This year’s IBM Global Entrepreneur program’s Startup Challenge focused on four sectors – Fintech, Healthtech, Smart City and Deep Tech. For more details, please visit ibmgepindia.com.