RAISE 2020: Meet the winners of India’s biggest AI Solution Challenge for Indian startups

RAISE 2020, a five-day virtual global AI summit organised by the Ministry of Electronics and IT that was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 5, announced the winners of its AI Startup Pitchfest today.

The 21 startups (15 winners and six special mentions) that have been shortlisted are from across different sectors, including healthcare, edtech, NLP, smart mobility and transportation, agriculture, and others.

The startups were selected by a jury comprising experts from the industry, academia, and the government for the AI Startup Pitchfest. The top winners in each category will get cash awards of Rs 20 lakh each.

The summit organised by the ministry along with NITI Aayog, is part of the NDA government’s continuing support to tech entrepreneurs and startups by providing exposure, recognition, and guidance.

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Below is a list of all the top 15 winners across six categories.

Category: Healthcare

SigTuple Technologies Private Limited and Artivatic.ai are the winners under the healthcare sector. While Sasikala Devi was selected for the special category award for her AI-based rapid diagnostic and Prognostic Tool kit for COVID-19.

Sigtuple Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Bengaluru-based SigTuple Technologies combines artificial intelligence, robotics, and data science to build smart screening solutions, to make healthcare accurate, accessible, and affordable. Driven by the passion to apply advanced artificial intelligence techniques towards healthcare, the startup, co-founded by Tathagato Rai Dastidar in 2015, built an AI-based smart diagnostic solutions to deliver accurate, affordable, and quality healthcare.

Artivatic.ai

Artivatic.ai’s product DARVIN — a modular API-based healthcare platform for customers, insurance, clinics, and hospitals — won in the healthcare category in RAISE 2020. Founded by IIT Kharagpur alum and two-time entrepreneur Layak Singh in March 2017, the AI insurtech and healthcare platform provides solutions to patients, providers, and insurance companies to enable affordable healthcare, better, low-cost, and need-based insurance products, access to health financing via B2B and B2B2C platforms.

Sasikaladevi N, Senior Assistant Professor, SASTRA Deemed University

LungXpert, an AI-based prognostic app, developed by Sasikaladevi N, Senior Assistant Professor, SASTRA Deemed University, won in the special category at RAISE 2020. A Ph.D. degree holder in Computer Science, Sasikaladevi has published over 42 papers in reputed international journals and conferences, including publications in SCI-Indexed Journals. LungXpert helps cardiologists and pulmonologists in the early detection of a few common cardiovascular diseases and pulmonary diseases.

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Category: Education

In the education sector, there were two winners, including CogniAble and Indiavidual Learning Limited. While the special category award went to Hind AI Labs. 

CogniABle ( SM Learning Skills Academy for Special Needs Pvt Ltd)

Leveraging machine learning technology, Gurugram-based CogniAble has built an affordable AI-based Autism screener and therapy, which can be remotely used by non-experts for screening and treatment of Autism and associated disorders.

Founded in 2016, the startup recently won in the education category at RAISE 2020. Having over 17 years of experience in large technology transformation projects in India, the US, and Europe, IIT Delhi alum and CEO Manu Kohli has been focussing his research in the area of AI and ML to manage Autism conditions.

Embibe (Indiavidual Learning Limited)

Mumbai-based edtech startup Embibe has created an AI-based learning solution to maximise the true potential of every student through the time they spend in formal education and beyond. In fact, the platform makes it possible for traditional educators to adopt personalisation of content for student delivery in the classroom.

Founded by Aditi Avasthi in 2012, the startup leverages a core deep learning engine, using 500 million hours of student engagement in the ages between five and 25 years, with educational content connected in a single three-dimensional graph.

Hind AI Labs

Hind AI Labs was mentioned in the special category for its AI-based scanner and reading assistance that saves time and effort. The startup was founded by IIT Bombay final year graduate students Rohit Kumar Chaudhary and Kavin Agrawal, who have a deep interest in AI and Data Science.

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Category: Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Under the NLP sector, Giridhari Devanathan's ENIXTA Innovations Pvt Ltd, Haptik, and Rezo.ai were the winners. Gnani.ai and Devnagri were selected for the special category award. 

Haptik

Mumbai-based conversational AI startup Haptik won in the NLP category for its chatbot at RAISE 2020. Having reached over 100 million devices, and processed over three billion conversations to date, Haptik’s intelligent virtual assistant solutions enable Fortune 500 brands globally to enhance customer experience while saving costs and increasing sales. Chief Business Officer Kartik Poddar has been leading the business side of the conversational AI platform for nearly three years now.

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Rezo.ai

Noida-based Rezo.ai’s AI platform automates conversations across multiple channels, including voice, emails, WhatsApp, social media, and chats. The conversational AI startup simplifies workflows by performing many of the time-consuming, manual tasks that humans are unable to perform at the speed and scale required for efficient and effective customer interactions. The startup was founded in 2017 by IITian couple Manish Gupta (Co-founder and CEO) and Rashi Gupta (Co-founder and Chief Data Scientist).

Enixta

Enixta — a winner in the NLP category at RAISE 2020 — has built an NLP-based solution that helps ecommerce companies improve their customer engagement conversations. Having a strong track record of building innovative products from scratch, Founder Giridhari Devanathan’s startup Enixta uses AI, NLP, and machine learning to convert customers' voices into actionable insights.

Gnani.ai

Ganesh Gopalan (CEO) and Ananth Nagraj (CTO) co-founded Gnani.ai in 2012. The New Jersey and Kolkata-based startup offers solutions for omnichannel automation and analytics for businesses to build customer-centric conversational AI on multiple channels. Its proprietary speech recognition systems — which was selected in the special category at RAISE 2020 — are used to develop a real-time speech-to-speech translation system, that powers customer support automation for leading companies in BFSI, ecommerce, and other sectors.

Devnagri

New Delhi startup Devnagri’s AI-powered human translation platform helps businesses reach Indian Internet users in their regional languages. Founded by Himanshu Sharma (CEO) and

Nakul Kundra (COO), the startup, which combines Neural Machine Translation with machine learning and a community to power translations, was recently selected in the special category at RAISE 2020.

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Category: Smart Mobility and Transportation

In the smart mobility and transportation, Nayan India Science And Technologies Private Limited, RoadMetrics Private Limited, and Uncanny Vision, have been adjudged as winners.

NAYAN India Science and Technologies Pvt Ltd.

Nayan India’s AI and computer vision for informatics and video analytics for the roadways in search of hazards, violations, and city-wide road and highway monitoring won in the smart mobility and transportation category at RAISE 2020. The Delhi-based startup was founded by Jayant Ratti (CEO) and works extensively with the police, road transport authorities, and other civic and private bodies to enhance monitoring and public engagement.

RoadMetrics

Founded in 2007 by Dipen Babariya (CEO), Nikhil Prasad Maroli (COO), and Mishal Jariwala (CTO), RoadMetrics is a deep tech startup on a mission to map road characteristics at scale. Its AI-based solution uses image and sensor data obtained from a simple smartphone to classify road defects, road signs, traffic signals, streetlights, etc. Started as a college project by Dipen and Mishal, the co-founders have been working on it for the past two years and collecting road data.

Uncanny Vision

Uncanny Vision’s automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) solution got a special mention at RAISE 2020. The award-winning AI-based computer vision startup delivers real-time edge-based video analytics solutions for smart cities, smart buildings, and smart parking, specifically for people and vehicle monitoring, using cameras.

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Category: Agriculture

In the agricultural category, TartanSense and IntelloLabs were the winners. Megara Robotics was nominated for the special category award. 

TartanSense

Bengaluru-based agritech startup TartanSense provides AI-powered robots for smart spraying of chemicals in Indian farms. The bots use AI-assisted computer vision and robotics to build precision sprayers for weed, insect, and disease control. The startup won in the agriculture category at RAISE 2020.

Intello Labs

Gurugram-based agritech startup Intello Labs uses image analytics and AI to process and test the quality of produce for B2B companies, thereby reducing food loss and improving customer satisfaction. The startup was launched by Milan Sharma, Nishant Mishra, Himani Shah, and Devendra Chandani in 2016.

Megara Robotics Pvt. Ltd.

Megara Robotics was nominated in the special mention at RAISE 2020 for its AI and robotics-based coconut harvester. The Chennai startup, founded by Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, focusses on building agricultural robotics, healthcare robotics, and robotics for humanitarian applications, among others.

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Category: Others

In the Others category, there were three winners, including Sequretek, GingerMind.ai, and Sirena Technologies Pvt Ltd. Matisoft Cyber Security Labs got the special mentions.

Sequretek

Cybersecurity startup Sequretek offers a comprehensive suite of products and services to secure information for enterprises of the future. The Mumbai-based startup is among the very few startups, who has end-to-end cybersecurity offerings in the areas of endpoint security, identity access governance, threat intelligence, security monitoring, and security management. It caters to companies across North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India.

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GingerMind.ai

Launched in 2015 by Gaurav Mittal, GingerMind.ai was started with a motive to build technology for the marginalised. Its artificial intelligence-based products have helped over 70,000 visually impaired people in 160+ countries to date. The startup’s product Eye-D, an AI-based solution for blind and visually impaired to identify objects, won at the RAISE 2020 event.

Sirena Technologies

Having over 20 years of experience in the consumer electronics and embedded space, Hariharan Bojan founded Sirena Technologies in Bengaluru in 2014. It built the first Indian Humanoid Robot ‘Nino,’ and introduced SKIP (Sirena Knowledge and Information Programme) for schools which is crafted to enable students to learn trending technologies, which include humanoids, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, voice recognition, computer vision, mechatronics, 3D printing, android programming, and more.

Matisoft Cyber Security Labs

Matisoft Cyber Security Labs received a special mention at RAISE 2020 for its AI-based anti-virus solution that focusses on catching a very advanced form of virus called file-less virus, which is responsible for over 80 percent of all security breaches in enterprises around the world.