Statistics
- The 9th edition of MERAKI was successfully conducted on 7th March 2020
- MERAKI’S 9th edition included judges like Mr. Manish Kheterpal, Partner, WaterBridge Ventures, Mr. Ashish Jain Partner, WaterBridge Ventures, & Mr. Amit Khosla, Founder, Valtrust Capital
- MERAKI’S Top 13 Finalists in 2020 included a wide array of business plans based on retail, food, e-commerce, mobile-based social network application platforms as well as social initiatives, sustainability issues, waste management and many other innovative ideas.
- The teams received valuable advice and feedback from the top investors and entrepreneurs.
Judges
- Amit Khosla, Founder, Valtrust Capital
- Mr. Ashish Jain, Partner, WaterBridge Ventures
- Manish Kheterpal, Partner, WaterBridge Ventures
- Nilesh Balakrishnan, VC, WaterBridge Ventures
- Aishwarya Sriram, VC, WaterBridge Ventures
- Sriram Ganesh Babu, VC, WaterBridge Ventures
- Samir Aggarwal Analyst, WaterBridge Ventures
Prizes
- Top 3 teams were felicitated with the fellowship of Rs 1, 50,000, Rs 1, 00,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively for the first, second and third prize respectively
Winners
- Winner: iTantra, FIIB, New Delhi
- 1st Runner Up: Nirmalya, IIT Delhi
- 2nd Runner Up : WLoops, IIT Kharagpur
Team 1 – DIME, National Institute of Technology, Karnataka
Team Members: Shilpa K Nayana, Aleena Jeeju Jimmy
Description: Water scarcity is a huge problem in India. Even if water is available, there is the issue of contamination. This is particularly severe in certain areas where there is lack of groundwater, resulting in illness. So the team come up with a solution of water disinfection & purification system using silver and copper nano-particles involving impregnated coconut shell waste carbon. In summary A water disinfection & purification system using silver and copper nano-particles involving impregnated coconut shell waste carbon.
Team 2 – HOMEFIX, Dehradun Institute of Technology University (DIT)
Team Members: Vishesh Gupta, Rashi Gupta
Description: Connecting Furniture manufacturers with Designers/Architects. A B@B platform where designers/architects/hotels/restaurants can directly connect with furniture manufacturers.
Team 3 – WLoops, IIT Kharagpur
Team Members: Manthan Doshi, Ahana, Divya Goyal
Description: ‘WLoops’ are ‘Waste Loops’ referring to the strands of cut hair found in salons. Our business idea aims to utilize this wasted hair by extracting amino acids and on the other hand optimizing biofuel production by wasted food. Part of the idea is to combine these two supply chains to bring forth a sustainable waste management system that provides for both the reduction and conversion of these wastes for the benefit of society by and large.
Team 4 – SPECable, Sardar Patel Institute of Technology
Team Members: Pratik Rathi, Tanay Kulkarni, Atul Chitanvis
Description: The problem diagnosed in children is learning disabilities. For the same they come up with a product its a spex with a camera records videos and captures images which will be sent to cloud server for further processing Dynamic text recoĀnition of imaĀes and text to speech for assistive readinĀ which can be heard simultaneously with text usinĀ speakers. Dynamic spelling check of user writing using datasets in the cloud server. And text to speech and spelling errors replayed through the speakers.
Team 5 – Kaathkuni Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh
Team Members: Hari Chand Dhali, Sarabdeep Singh Manchanda, Abhijeet Mandal
Description: Grange Road is automobile garage aggregator based out of Delhi NCR, we have more than 1200 Garages in Delhi NCR and we also have our pilots running in Lucknow, Jaipur & Agra. Our monthly revenue is 6-8 L per month and currently we are bootstrapped and would love to expand and connect with the right mentors and team to scale our business further.
Team 6 – Book A Plant from Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce
Team Members: Ashleen Kohli, Mudit Kandal, Deepanshu Kansal, Yashwik Ahuja
Description: Book A Plant is an online venture that connects plant vendors and potters to customers through a website, directly delivering plants at their doorstep. The customer gets to order the plants at the comfort of their homes and the feature to customize their plant by selecting from a variety of stylish yet affordable pots available at the website. The website also offers after-sales services like maintenance packages to ensure the well being of the products. With the feature of Vertical Gardening, Book A Plant has successfully expanded into an array of plant products, thus becoming a one-stop solution for all the plant-related needs of the customer.
Team 7 – iTantraFIIB, New Delhi
Team Members: Rashi Rathore, Nimish Jain
Description: Eyecan is built with the primary purpose to help individuals with a visual impairment. Our purpose is to be able to build technology to assist the interaction of the impaired with their external environment. An algorithm that is an amalgamation of Artificial Intelligence and IoT tools, we develop commodities that would provide an ease with certain everyday tasks and capacitate their will to work without assistance.
Due to the absence of any help, there comes a certain difficulty to go about regular activities such as crossing a road or finding their way out of a busy area. We wish to motivate them and make them less vulnerable while traversing though tasks as basic as reading. We intend to improve on challenges that haven’t bridged the technological gaps yet, to provide appropriate help to the afflicted. We believe in creating value for our customers, and equip them in a way that they can proudly say ‘i-can’.
Team 8 – Sanrakshak, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore
Team Members: Amartya Jha
Description: To provide utmost safe and secure railway journey to our fellow passengers by attaching our robust and affordable sensors beneath the engine of the train which provides real time data about the occurrence of cracks or any kind of faults on the railway line and ultimately offers a holistic end to end solution to the government.
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Team 9 – Sere, Hansraj College, New Delhi
Team Members: Vivek Verma
Description: Massive decline in principal earnings’ of kiranas due to heavy competition; inviability in competing with modern retail prices and product variety, lack of technology adoption; limited infrastructure and non standardised experience with variable discounting restrict customer reach/scale. Sere brings factory priced branded medicines and supplements to your trusted kiranas directly from manufacturers/distributors.
Team 10 – Advo.cop, St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai
Team Members: Elton Pereira, Salace Lobo, Leon Rodrigues
Description: ‘advo.cop’ is a cloud based Dynamic Digital advertising model. We give the advertisers the perfect opportunity to reach the consumers at/near the point of purchase. They can strategically place your message in front of millions of shoppers around malls, consumers of a service and events, giving advertisers an opportunity to reach a highly captive audience. They are not restricted to static advertising but open to dynamic advertising as well. Be it – launching a product, explaining a service, presenting your Brand or offering the discount.
Team 11 – NIRMALYA, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi
Team Members: Sarthak Garg, Jhanvi Khosla, Chaitnya Shrivastava
Description:aims to tackle the growing problem of ill waste management and the overburdened landfills in Indian cities by providing scientifically advanced, innovative composting solutions to manage organic waste at source. We provide products to tackle both types of waste separately: ‘Ruchitra-Leaf composter’ for horticulture waste at the community level,‘Sugriha -Home composter’ and ‘Cambio’-Home Composter for kitchen waste.
Team 12 – Coffeereads, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli
Team Members: S Karan Kumar
Description: lot of authors, especially debut authors prefer traditional publishers as it is a matter of pride and they need not worry about the daunting aspects of selling their books. The problem is that Due to a large disparity between the number of aspiring authors and traditional publishers, this creates a bottleneck and an overwhelming workload for editors of the publishing houses to see which books have promise. Because of that we might be loosing out on many promising authors who just need more feedback. Here they came up with two components first the feedback system- there they charge the authors for gathering reviews and other the E-book platform- there they charge the readers for the final e-books.
Team 13 – BlisCare, GHRCE
Team Members: Chinmaya Naik, Nikita
Description: BlisCare strives to provide best platform for pregnant women via technological advanced device and app which will detect possible complications in earlier stage thus providing blissful pregnancy experience