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The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) on Tuesday launched the Carbon Zero Challenge (CZeroC) 2019, an 'All India Energy and Environment Innovation Competition,' to commemorate the World Environment Day.
The aim of the second edition of the challenge was to reach out to environmental entrepreneurs, start-ups and Educational Institutions across the country. This is one-of-its-kind initiative pioneered by IIT-M in collaboration with Virtusa, a global information technology services company, and the NGo Industrial Waste Management Association (IWMA). The competition timeline aligns with the academic calendar to encourage student teams to carry out CZeroC Project as part of their curriculum requirement. An IIT-M release said the competition requires participants to go undergo a 'customer discovery' phase for pertinent problem identification, market assessment and entrepreneurship training before building the prototype. Addressing the launch function, Dr Rajendra Kumar, Principal Secretary/Industries Commissioner, and Director of Industries and Commerce, said "India has the third largest ecosystem for startups with over USD five billion of funding every year. Yet, we can do a lot better in making it easier for startups to be set up by delaying the layers of clearances.''''Our effort has been to ensure that the entire process is easier for entrepreneurs to get approval and to approach banks for loans. Both the state and central governments have various schemes to boost startups'', he said, adding, the Tamil Nadu government was trying hard to improve the ease of doing business, he said. Pointing out that the State Government recently launched an online single window portal to make the process of starting an enterprise completely hassle-free, Dr Rajendra Kumar promised full support from the Tamil Nadu Government for the winners of Carbon Zero Challenge (CZeroC) 2019 when the teams were ready to go ahead with startups. For shortlisted 25 teams, the CZeroC 2019 would Offers up to Rs five lakh per team to build prototypes, internship/liaising with industry for 'problem identification' and 'piloting', mentorship by technical and business experts and entrepreneurship training and certification, the release said. UNI GV 1458 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0277-1391353.Xml
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