Accenture Announces Winners of First ‘Accenture Innovation Challenge’

 Accenture declared the winners of the first Accenture Innovation Challenge. It is a competition that is created to inspire innovation amongst the college students in India. The grand prize of the competition was given to a team from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur for their solution to tackle sleep disorders.

And winners in other categories were students from Dronacharya Group of Institution, Noida; Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram; IIT-Roorkee; Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women, Bhimavaram; and IIT-Madras.

Commenting on the competition, Mohan Sekhar, senior managing director, Accenture Technology Services said, “We are thrilled that over 13,000 students from over 900 colleges took part in this year’s Accenture Innovation Challenge and submitted over 7,000 innovation ideas. It was exciting to see students apply their innovative and creative abilities in developing technology prototypes aimed at disrupting business and creating social impact.”

The students from various disciplines, such as engineering, design, commerce and business management also showcased innovative usage of technologies such as artificial intelligence, internet of things, the blockchain, cloud, mobility and analytics.

The winners were chosen from the 12 teams that were selected to participate in the Grand Finale round. The Finale was recently held in Bengaluru, based on the criterion of innovativeness, technical viability and impact.

The 12 teams presented their work to a jury that consisted of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, academics and industry leaders. In addition to the grand prize, awards were also given in five other categories: ‘Disruptive Businesses’; ‘Tech for Good’; Jury’s Choice; Most Popular Team; and Employees’ Choice.

The six awards and their winners consist of:

• Grand Prize: The grand prize was awarded to the team from IIT Kharagpur for ‘SleepDoc’ —  a wireless sleep assistant that addresses the growing problem of sleep disorders plaguing the present generation. SleepDoc uses a wireless device to remotely monitor sleep patterns and an intelligent voice-interactive system to suggest changes to the user. The live data monitoring system tracks the user’s heart and breathing rate and alerts the nearest doctor automatically in case of discrepancies in the parameters.

• Disruptive Business category award: This award was won by the team from Dronacharya Group of Institution, Noida for ‘BinBot’. This idea features a robot that performs various waste management tasks such as waste collection, segregation and disposal. It uses infrared sensors to keep the disposal bin’s lid closed and has a built-in plastic detector to alert users to segregate plastic waste from other waste.

• Tech for Good category award: It was won by the team from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram for ‘Real Time Text to Braille Converter’. This particular idea makes printed information accessible to the visually impaired. It comprises of a letter-to-letter Braille converter that prints the recognized letter in the Braille cell and a small cuboid that can be held with three fingers, enabling the visually impaired to read any printed book.

• Jury’s Choice award: The Jury choice award was won by the team from IIT Roorkee for ‘SNAP’, it is a way out to assist farmers in increasing the quality of farm yield, optimizing the spends on fertilizers and increasing the income by addressing the problem of soil acidification due to fertilizer overuse. The solution features a hand-held patented device based on the principles of multi-spectral imaging to capture images of plants at specific wavelengths and determine the exact nitrogen concentration in the plant and soil.

• Most Popular Choice award: the award was won by the women’s team from Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women in Bhimavaram for ‘Sahaya.’ It is a blockchain solution created to deal with the distinctive challenges associated with making donations. The solution makes the donation process entirely transparent to all the stakeholders involved and makes sure that the donation reaches the original requestor and beneficiary.

• Employees’ Choice award: It was won by the team from IIT Madras that developed a ‘Compact Bio-inspired robot for septic and sewage line cleaning and inspection’. Featuring a robot that can remove blockages and clean sewers, this innovative solution deals with the challenges of manual sewage cleaning, which often results in health disorders and death for the labourers involved.

Each member of the Grand Prize team received prizes worth INR 100,000, as well as an all-expense paid trip to ‘The Dock’, Accenture’s multidisciplinary research and incubation hub in Dublin, Ireland. Each member of the two teams selected as a category winner — for ‘Disruptive Businesses’ and ‘Tech for Good’ — received prizes worth INR 50,000.

In addition to awarding the prizes and trophies, Accenture conducted a fast-track recruitment process for eligible students in the Grand Finale to be a part of Accenture’s technology centers in India.

The jury that judged the top 12 teams in the Grand Finale included: Ajay Chaturvedi — founder of HarVa, a non-profit outfit focused on skill development, BPO and microfinance; Chaitanya Ramalingegowda — vice president of investor relations at LetsVenture; Dr. T.V. Geetha — dean of the College of Engineering at Guindy Anna University in Chennai; Hari Nair — founder and CEO of HolidayIQ; Mabel Chacko — co-founder and COO of Open Financial Technologies Pvt Ltd; Dr. Milind Pandey — project director of the MIT Group of Institutions in Pune; Roopam Sharma – two-time winner of Innovation Jockeys contest sponsored by Accenture and Innovator of Manouve; and SuryaprakashKonanuru — CTO at Ideaspring Capital.