Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announces winner of video conference solution ‘grand challenge’

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Communications and Law and Justice, on Thursday announced the results of Grand Challenge for Developing Video Conference Solution. Vconsol, a product of Alappuzha (Kerala) based Techgentsia Software Technologies Private Limited, was declared as the winner. 

The winner of the challenge will be provided with financial support of Rs 1 crore, and additional Rs 10 lakh towards O&M for next three years. It will be adopted for use by the government through a contract.

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In addition, the jury — composed of senior officers of the government, reputed academicians and eminent members from the IT industry — also selected the products developed by three applicants as potential products. They decided to offer a developmental contract, to be supported with Rs 25 lakh each, for further maturing their product within three months. These three products developed by Jaipur-based Sarv Webs Pvt. Ltd. (Sarv Wave), Hyderabad-based PeopleLink Unified Communications Pvt Ltd (Insta VC), and Chennai-based Instrive Softlabs Pvt Ltd (HydraMeet) will be further analysed by a technical committee and subsequently Ministry of Electronics and IT will recommend to onboard all the four selected products on GeM.

According to a release, all the aforesaid video conferencing products will also be provided and supported by STQC, CERT-In, CDAC, and NIC. It has also been recommended that all four products will be hosted on NIC cloud and NIC will facilitate the adoption of these products for Government use through GeM.  All teams, including the winning team, shall also be free to market the product globally, the release added.

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology had announced an Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution under the Digital India Initiative on April 12, 2020. The Innovation Challenge was open for participation from industry, startups and individual experts. An overwhelming response was received from across the country, with a total of 1,983 applications being received, which were evaluated and subsequently supported through a three-stage process (Ideation, Prototype and Product Stage).

Out of these, 12 applicants with innovative VC solutions were shortlisted to develop/mature the prototype for which support of Rs 10 lakh each was provided. The prototypes were further evaluated by the eminent jury to shortlist five applicants for building a ready-to-market product.

The five shortlisted applicants were further provided financial support of Rs 20 lakh (for three) and Rs 15 lakh (for two), mentorship, testing and onboarding onto NIC cloud. Jury and mentors comprising eminent experts from industry, academia and government provided extensive support to the challenge on a pro bono basis. The five finalists pitched the solution and the jury evaluated each of these products in detail and declared the winners.