Winners of Jamia’s “Innovate for a Cause’’ Competition Announced

Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), Jamia Millia Islamia, conducted the final round of ‘Innovate For a Cause’ competition on 18th March 2015. The competition was aimed at developing ideas which would solve a social problem and were evaluated for the social value, the expected results, feasibility and originality.

Out of the 20 odd teams who submitted their proposal, 8 were shortlisted for the final round. The panel of judges consisted of Sumit Dagar, founder of Kriyate, a mobile app for blind with international recognition as TED fellow, Upendra Giri, founder of ACOE Global and Mr. Sherfur Rahman, Co-Founder of the e-commerce company Shopatplaces.com.

“CIE is a great initiative for enabling education more applied and aligned to solve the common problems of people of India and can become impetus to contribute to Make In India Initiative by Indian Government. Being alumni of Jamia and part of the jury, I feel proud to associate with this initiative. We had some great ideas and presentation from the students today at the competition,” said Mr Giri.

The contestant pool was diverse with representation from engineering, architecture, management studies, social studies, economics and many more. The ideas ranged from improved cycle rickshaws, social reality shows, improvement in sanitation to education tools. Each team pitched for their proposed solution in front of the panel which was followed by a question/answer session.

The first prize was given to the team ‘Eat-Creative’ where the students proposed a new cooking pot (Handi), with composite material to improve the efficiency, enhance the strength and promote healthier cooking. The second prize was given to ‘Sani-Tech’ a new and innovative toilet design using material suited for a geographical region with an improved sewage disposal system, reducing water pollution. The multi-purpose rickshaw, ‘Innomech’ conceptualized by the students with better ergonomics won the third prize. The ideas generated from the competition will be patented, prototyped and tested by the CIE, for commercial viability.

To facilitate and introduce the process of patenting and other intellectual property related issues, a day-long Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Awareness Workshop was organized by the Centre in association with Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) New Delhi on the same day. Prof. Prabhat Ranjan, Executive Director, TIFAC gave the keynote address for the workshop. Mr Yashwant Dev Panwar and Ms. Dipti from the Patent Facilitation Centre, TIFAC enlightened the audience about the patenting process, what can be patented, the free services offered by PFC etc. Ms. Ritika Mogha, an eminent IPR Attorney also addressed the audience and briefed about issues related to Copyright Management in Academic Institutes.

[Official Jamia Millia Islamia  Press Release Dated 18 March 2015]