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Dell Technologies recently announced the winners of the sixth edition of its startup challenge, which aims to provide early-stage startups and student teams with a unique opportunity to present their business ideas in a supportive and competitive environment. The ideas were presented in front of a live audience and jury panel at a grand finale ceremony held in Bengaluru and three startups were chosen as winners, out of 12 shortlisted to pitch.

Thought-provoking discussions

The evening attracted an audience of various stakeholders and enthusiasts of the startup ecosystem including technologists, investors, and entrepreneurs, coming together to hear first-hand from thought leaders from the ecosystem over fireside chats and panel discussions, and the presentations by the finalists.

The speakers included Ramkumar Narayanan, Member – Executive Council & Chairperson, NASSCOM Product Council on the topic ‘Scaling from unique ideas to unicorns’

The fireside was followed by an inspiring soonicorn founder presentation titled ‘Seed to Scale – the growth story of Flutura’, presented by Derick Jose of Flutura.

Flutura is a pioneering Industrial AI company focused on unlocking high-value operational outcomes, with a vision to unlock a billion-dollar in outcomes for its customers and empower 1,00,000 industrial engineers.

The evening also featured a tech-ecosystem panel on ‘Powering innovation at scale with tech’ with representation from Sudiip Goswami, Director & GM – Global Alliances, Service Providers & Start-ups – India, Dell Technologies, Ashok Chandavarkar, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Intel India, Geetha Manjunath, Founder and CEO, Niramai; Vijay Iyer, MD, ValueBridge Capital and Co-founder, Merisis Advisors.

Dipanjan Basu, Partner and CFO, Fireside Ventures shared insights on Future of Funding where he helped decode the emerging funding landscape, and advised startups on how to negotiate it.

An evening for bold ideas and disruptive innovation

“Disruptive startups with bold ideas never fail to inspire and astound me, and today was no exception,” said Swati, Director and General Manager, Small Business of Dell Technologies, commenting on the quality of ideas on Season 6.

“Entrepreneurship is a part of Dell Technologies’ DNA, and we are committed to helping small businesses to showcase how technology can enable innovation and growth. To foster the holistic growth of entrepreneurs and startups in India, Dell Technologies enables them with scalable technology resources in the form of innovative products, technologies, and services, both traditional infrastructure and multi-cloud technologies, and also offers skill development in the information technology space, to build a robust startup ecosystems,” she added.

Live pitches from the top 12

The live pitch sessions of the evening featured the top 12 startups hand-picked from a shortlist of 100 startups, who were in turn shortlisted from the 1600+ entries received this year.

Startups pitching included Simyog Technologies (presented by Anoop Adhyapak the Co-founder); SyncSense Technologies (presented by Vibhor Saran, Co-founder and CEO); Ancora Technologies (presented by Rohit Panwar the Co-founder); Pazo (presented by Sharjeel Ahamed, CEO); Hala Mobility (presented by Srikanth Reddy, Founder and CEO); Okulo Aerospace (presented by Parithi Govindaraju, Founder); Kazam EV Tech (presented by Akshay Shekhar, Co founder and CEO); QuickReel (Ansh Vashistha, Founder); Meson Labs (presented by Ashish Sharma, Director); EV Urjaa (presented by Sanyog Tiwari, CEO); Neodocs Healthcare (Pratik Lodha, Co-founder and CTO) and Tartan (presented by Meet Semlani, Founder)

Meet the winners of Season 6

The evening culminated fittingly with a rousing award ceremony presided over by Swati of Dell Technologies and Ashok of Intel.

Winning the grand prize of Rs 15 lakh worth of Dell technology, in addition to other perks, was Neodocs, a startup that turns smartphones into diagnostic tools. Pazo – a startup that empowers frontline workforce to automate daily operations via mobiles – was adjudged the first runner up and winner of Rs 10 lakh worth Dell technology. Finally, Kazam – a startup that’s innovating EV charging management software – was adjudged the second runner up and winner of Rs 5 lakh worth of Dell technology.