Challenge For Indian Startups: Develop A Zoom Alternative, Win Rs 1 Crore From Govt (How To Apply?)

The Zoom videoconferencing app found its popularity boosting as the lockdown in the country continues to be imposed due to the Coronavirus outbreak. 

However, the app is surrounded by a whirlwind of controversies, to the extent that Government issued a warning to some departments and employees against using it. 

And now the Government has launched an Innovation Challenge with the intention of getting Indian startups to come up with an alternative for the videoconferencing app. 

Find out all the details about the Innovation Challenge right here!

Government Of India Announces Innovation Challenge With Rs. 1 Crore Prize

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) has launched an Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution. This challenge has been launched under the Make in India Initiative. 

The prize for the competition is a whopping Rs. 1 crore. 

The innovation challenge is open for all the experts in all the domains of the software development life cycle. 

Three Stages Of The Innovation Challenge Competition

There will be three stages of this competition. The first stage of this challenge will be the selection of innovative challenges. The selection will be made from a list of participants and those with the best ideas will be awarded Rs. 5 lakhs. Then, 10 best ideas from these will be selected, which will be funded with this amount to develop the prototype.

Next comes the second stage, wherein three teams from the top 10 will be shortlisted and awarded Rs. 20 lakhs to build the solution.

In the third and the final stage, the selected solution will be employed by the Government of India and the State Governments as well. Also, the best team will be rewarded with the Rs. 1 crore prize money and will be the first make in India video-conferencing application.

Additionally, the winning team will also be given an extra amount of Rs. 10 lakhs every year to provide maintenance and operational support. 

The winning team will also be required to support the application for a minimum of four years.

Conditions To Be Met For An Idea To Be Entered In The Competition

• The application should support all the video resolutions, audio quality and work in low and high network scenarios. 
• It should also work on any device and be made with a low power processor. It should also be enabled with screen and file sharing features.
• The application should have the capability to host several concurrent conferences with multiple participants to participate in each conference.
• The app should also be encrypted with network communication and the cloud should have a browser which is an app-based interface.
• What’s the most important is that the participating company should be a startup and it should be defined by the Government of India.

The last date of registration is 30 April, and the last date to submit the ideas is May 7th. The winner will be announced on 29th July.