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Festival will expose Pune youth to startup initiatives: Hardikar
Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is organising a ‘Festival of Future’ on February 28 and 29
PUNE In order to boost startup-related initiatives for youth and residents, the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is organising a ‘Festival of Future’ on February 28 and 29, where startups will be promoted and industrialists will guide budding entrepreneurs. It will be held at Auto Cluster Exhibition Centre. Shravan Hardikar, municipal commissioner, PCMC, speaks to HT about the festival.
What is the idea behind starting the festival?
We have started this festival with the initiative to attract the youths and expose them to various opportunities in the field of startup and innovation. The festival was proposed under the Smart City initiative.
What are the startups that will be showcased?
We have received interesting ideas like for instance, a solution which uses computer vision algorithms to analyse and report the road condition. This data will be very useful for the public works department to speed up the repair process and monitor the quality of the repair. Our ultimate goal is to provide a safe ride to our citizens. Another is a dashboard-mounted camera-based system which monitors the driver behaviour and alerts the driver for any misbehaviour. Currently, it supports various types of alerts like drowsiness, distracted driving, over-speeding, unauthorized vehicle access, rash driving among others. Apart from alerts, the product offers live location, live video streaming, driver profiling and webphone-sms notifications.
Who are the speakers for the event?
We have at least 18 accomplished speakers from several walks of life who have become stalwarts in the field of entrepreneurship in their chosen sectors. We have a total of four tracks; a track on entrepreneurship, a track on health and fitness, a track on unconventional careers and one on future of skills. Raghunath Mashelkar will be the keynote speaker for the event. Other speakers for the event include Naiyya Saggi, CEO, BabyChakra, Akshay Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO of EarlySalary, Vishnu Manohar, Vishnu ji ki rasoi, Apoorv Sharma, co-founder & president of Venture Catalysts among others.
What kind of response do you see from the residents?
We are expecting youths and citizens to participate in large numbers and benefit from this opportunity. Many innovative companies from Pimpri Chinchwad and Pune region will be participating in the event. We already have got a good response to our hackathon and we are sure this programme will be a success.
