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Bits’n’bytes: Know about startup, business news in Pune
AgriVijay, a marketplace of renewable energy products, has raised seed funding from Indigram Labs under Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS)
Venture Center named as Stanley Black & Decker Makers Grant Recipient
Pune: Stanley Black & Decker announced recipients of its first “Empower Makers” Global Impact Challenge. Venture Center has been named as a Makers Grant Recipient for its efforts to set-up a Makers Hive at Venture Center as an open access DIY and training facility for budding inventors, entrepreneurs and other trainers with a focus on cutting, drilling and engraving wood, hybrid and sustainable materials.
Initiated in 2021, the Global Impact Challenge grant program will award up to $25 million in grant funding over the next five years to nonprofits that are supporting trade workforce development initiatives in the construction and manufacturing sectors. Venture Center was selected as one of 86 organizations that will help skill and reskill roughly 180,000 makers throughout 2022.
“We look forward to setting up and operating the Makers Hive at Venture Center as part of this grant. This will add new capabilities and momentum to our efforts in upskilling, nurturing and supporting hardware product developers and innovators.,” said Dr. Premnath, Director at Venture Center.
AgriVijay raises seed funding under Startup India Seed Fund Scheme
Pune: AgriVijay, a marketplace of renewable energy products, has raised seed funding from Indigram Labs under Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS). AgriVijay was founded amidst Covid outbreak in June 2020 under the leadership of Vimal Panjwani and Shobha Chanchlani.
Founder Vimal Panjwani and Shobha Chanchlani said, “With this funding round and support by our incubators along with Atal Innovation Mission and NITI Aayog we will bring in Technology such as AI and ML with our revamped AI enabled website and Mobile App for better engagement with the Farmers & Rural households. We also will be utilising the funds to hire more qualified workforce to help us scale and grow to next level. We are still in touch with investors to complete this round as we have an ambitious goal to set up 3000+ renewable energy stores across rural India.”
“AgriVijay has generated more than US$ 1,00,000 of revenue since its inception and have opened 55+ Renewable Energy Stores,” they added.
Nurture.farm and Digisafe Insurance Brokers introduce KAVACH for farmers
Pune: Agritech startup nurture.farm and Digisafe insurance brokers announced their partnership on offering KAVACH - a weather-based cash guarantee program launched for nurture.farm farmers.
KAVACH offers farmers a cashback up to ₹500 per acre against unseasonal rainfall. Highly customised as per local weather data, the KAVACH will transfer payouts directly to a farmer’s bank account if rainfall breaches a pre-set limit. The farmers would not need to intimate for claims. Instead, the payouts will be automatically triggered based on the IMD weather data.
Dhruv Sawhney, Business Head and COO, nurture.farm said, “We are nudging a behavioural change in farmers by encouraging them towards embracing financial protection tools. The automatic payouts, which happen timely within a week of the rainfall breach, will be a gamechanger. We wish to extend this to 3,00,000 farmers this year.”
Suman Roy Choudhury, co-founder, Digisafe said, “With this partnership, we can extend risk mitigation to farmers who will highly benefit from such coverage. KAVACH will play a significant role in increasing insurance penetration in the agriculture sector, especially in rural areas, where it is staggeringly low.”
KPIT Sparkle announces winners of 2022 Innovation Challenge
Pune: KPIT announced the winners of KPIT Sparkle 2022, an annual national design and development innovation contest for Engineering, Science and Design students. Team Elespa which was a joint project of Dr D.Y. Patil Institute of Technology, Pune, Sandip University, Nasik; College of Engineering, Pune and Jayawantrao Sawant College of Engineering, Pune won the Platinum award of INR 10,00,000 for designing an advanced automated hybrid electric vehicle with a performance monitoring system which solves the problem of long battery charging times, range concerns, lack of charging stations and high initial cost.
Team Kissan Connect from S. G. Balekundri Institute of Technology, Belgaum won the Gold award of INR 5,00,000 for designing a multifunctional retrofit for EV tractors, which can integrate all the various attachments. Team Electrophene from Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, won the silver award of INR 2,50,000 for designing Hydrogen, Fossil fuel and Electric based three fuel systems for two wheelers.
Team Unanimous4 from Jayawantrao Sawant College of Engineering, Pune won the Abhinavi1 award and a cash prize of INR 2,00,000 for designing a multipurpose agricultural Electric Vehicle that can perform agricultural tasks using AR/VR, ML/AI, IoT technologies. Team Dravya from Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, Pune won the Abhinavi2 award and a cash prize of INR 1,00,000 for designing a battery cooling system that uses dielectric fluid to reduce battery temperature instead of forced air cooling and indirect liquid cooling.
Mahika announces online skill development courses for women
Pune: Mahika announced online skill development and job opportunities exclusively for women in the white-collar job sector. All women with minimum 10+2 education can enroll on their website for free.
“Industry is struggling to get the right talent. While women are ahead of men in education, only 30-35 per cent women enter the job sector. India churns out around 60 lakh graduates every year, but more than half of them are unemployable,” quotes Hiren Kulkarni, Founder and CEO of Mahika.
Mahika provides easy access to skill-based online learning and career guidance at no cost, thereby creating opportunities to become preferred candidates at job interviews. The start-up is backed by notable board of advisors like Padma Vibhushan Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, Former Director General - CSIR, Usha Thorat, Former Deputy Governor – RBI, G. Padmanabhan, Former ED – RBI & Former Chairman – BOI and Sandeep Tandon, Investor & MD – Tandon Group. Currently, the startup is focusing on Tier 1 & Tier 2 cities in Maharashtra with a plan to cover all major cities and towns across India. Although education is free for women, the startup will derive its revenue from companies post placements.
FloBiz launches Smart Collect on myBillBook
Pune: Neobank FloBiz announced its foray into banking services for SMBs with the launch of Smart Collect - part of the Smart Banking module - on its flagship GST invoicing and accounting product myBillBook. With Smart Collect, businesses can now collect payments from their customers instantaneously via UPI and bank transfers and automatically reconcile them against pending invoices.
myBillBook also launched its Point-of-Sale (POS) invoicing interface in December last year for organised retail and franchise businesses, thereby making Smart Collect a powerful payments solution for both non-retail and retail SMBs on myBillBook.
Rahul Raj, co-founder and CEO of FloBiz, said, “In January 2022, the total monthly trade recorded by the 1M+ active SMBs on myBillBook stood at $1.5B and continues to grow steadily. The broader Smart Banking module will allow SMBs to collect payments from customers and make outward transactions towards suppliers, vendors and day-to-day business expenses. It will also bring Current Account management capabilities directly on myBillBook, making it a one-stop solution for all invoicing, accounting, inventory management, business reporting and banking needs for businesses.”
