Late last month, Social Alpha, the non-profit startup incubator set up by the Tata Trusts in Bengaluru, came together with Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a not-for-profit arm of the government’s Department of Biotechnology in Delhi.
Together, they launched a quest to find young entrepreneurs working in the field of assistive technologies: innovations in tech that provide enabling and empowering solutions for people with disabilities. The programme would and support them through monetary and market access.
The quest, which invites applications to be made through Social Alpha’s website, also has on board the support of a Benglauru-based IT company called MPhasis, for its curation, design, and implementation.
Four young companies, already discovered and incubated by Social Alpha, were showcased at the launch. Of these, Bionic Yantra from Bengaluru designs affordable bionic exoskeletons for those with mobility problems; Blee Tech from Mumbai provides tech- and design-driven solutions for those with a hearing impairment; Innaumation from Bengaluru makes voice-boxes for throat cancer patients; and Tactopus, also from Bengaluru, makes texture-rich Braille aids for students who can benefit from better access to science and maths concepts.
Successful applicants will be admitted to a three-month accelerator programme that will make the entrepreneurs investment-ready. Social Alpha aims to identify 10 innovations, providing them with upto ₹20 lakhs each, giving them a push towards accepting and implementing work orders.
“Our aim is to build up sectors in which the mainstream market is absent. So we search for innovators and entrepreneurs in such sectors, with assistive technologies being the latest,” says Manoj Kumar, the CEO and co-founder of Social Alpha.
Right now, most start-ups in the sphere of assistive technologies have come from Bengaluru, Pune, and Mumbai. The team plans to do an outreach by going to various cities in India. “It is likely that people in engineering and medical colleges, working in the rehabilitation space, might have some ideas,” Kumar says, adding that despite welcoming applicants of all ages, they foresee most coming from young people. “People born in the ‘80s and ‘90s are likely to solve this country’s problems,” he says.
Deadline for applications, August 15th, 2019; to apply: Socialalpha.org/assistive-technologies
