National Technology Day celebrations highlight surge in entrepreneurship spirit for cost effective tech

The National Technology Day celebrations highlighted an increase in entrepreneurship spirit to develop cost effective indigenous solutions.

The day is a significant milestone in the history of India’s technological innovations as India successfully tested nuclear bombs in Pokhran on May 11, 1998 and is commemorated every year by honouring the architects of such innovations. Awards are given to several innovators and entrepreneurs on this day every year.

For the year 2021, Technology Development Board (TDB) invited application for National Awards under three categories and total 15 winners were selected after a stringent two-tier evaluation process with panellists being eminent scientists and technologists themselves. 

Every year, for furtherance of its mandate, TDB seeks applications for National awards for commercialization of technologies under three categories National Awards, MSME awards, and Startup awards. These awards are conferred to various industries for successful commercialization of innovative indigenous technology. This annual honour provides a platform of recognition to the Indian industries and their technology provider who work to bring innovation to the market and help in contributing to the vision of “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat”.

TDB is a statutory body of Government of India functioning under Department of Science of Technology which provides financial assistance to Indian industrial concerns and other agencies, for commercialization of indigenized technologies or adaptation of imported technologies for wider domestic applications. Since its inception in 1996, TDB has funded more than 300 companies for commercialization of technologies.

The details of National Awards for the year 2020-21 under three categories are as follows: -

CATEGORY 1:  

NATIONAL AWARD FOR SUCCESSFUL COMMERCIALIZATION OF INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY

This award is given to an industrial concern which has successfully developed & commercialized an indigenous technology. In case, the technology developer / provider and the company commercializing the technology are two different organizations, each is eligible for award of Rs.25 Lakh and a trophy.

This year following two companies have been selected for this award: -

  1. M/s Borosil Renewables Limited, Mumbai

Borosil Renewables Limited developed the state-of-the-art manufacturing technology to produce a variety of solar glasses that are fully tempered solar glass of 2 mm thickness which is being used in high-powered glass-glass bifacial modules. “Selene'' an anti-glare solar glass for Solar PV installations. The company started supplying 2.0 mm and 2.5 mm fully tempered glass to the European markets and aims to increase the production capacity to 5.0 GW equivalent of solar glass manufacturing in near future.

  1. M/s Raina Industries Private Limited, Mumbai

The Company has indigenised Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) and deals with the manufacture and sale of textile reinforced concrete precast elements for the building and construction sector. The textile reinforcement structures have to be especially designed to take resulting strains in the building member. This advanced material and the associated new manufacturing technologies reduces concrete consumption, embodied energy of building components, brings downs the End of Life waste and this material can be used for new as well as retrofitting works. The fields of application of TRC include façade elements, street furniture and designer structures for Smart cities, marine and coastal infrastructure including inland waterways.

 

CATEGORY 2

NATIONAL AWARD UNDER MSME CATEGORY

The Award of Rs. 15 lakhs each in this category is given to selected SMEs that has successfully commercialized the product based on indigenous technology. This year following three companies have been selected for this award: -

  1. M/s Pluss Advanced Technologies Private Limited, Gurugram. The company developed “Celsure”, an indigenous Temperature Controlled Pharmaceutical Shipping Box. The heart of the system is cascaded Phase Change Material (PCM) technology that ensures controlled temperature flatness. The precise temperature control in the Pharma box and endurance of more than 100 hours helps to maintain the same quality and may avoid the complete degradation of vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
  2. M/s Inntot Technologies Private Limited, Kochi. Existing Digital Radio Broadcast Receiver solutions in the market require dedicated chips to perform complex operations like Demodulation and channel decoding. The end product cost becomes very high due to high chip costs and complex hardware design. M/s Inntot has developed a high quality and cost-effective solution for Digital broadcast radio reception based on the concept of Software Defined Radio with its own improvisations that have been patented in India and USA. Inntot’s solution will help digital radio receiver manufacturers across the globe to come up with low-cost digital radio variants.

 

  1. M/s Olene Life Sciences Private Limited, Chennai .  The company developed GinfortTMa ginger extract powder standardized to higher amount of Gingeroids (>26% total gingerols) formulated using patented Aqueosome® technology. The product patent is granted in India and USA. Aqueosome® technology is unique and superior compared to the conventional technologies available for producing powdered ginger extract from ginger oleoresin. Aqueosome® technology converts liquid oleoresin into powder with minimal use of excipients and leads to higher purity and lesser side effects. In addition, the process is solvent free, which adds to the safety of the product and the environment. Ginfort has been clinically validated for Functional Dyspepsia.

 

CATEGORY 3

NATIONAL AWARD UNDER TECHNOLOGY START-UP CATEGORY   

This award is given to a technology start-up for promising new technology with potential for commercialization. The award in addition to the trophy includes a cash award of Rs.15 Lakh. This year ten start-ups have been selected for these awards. These are as follows: -

  1. M/s Proficient Visions Solutions Private Limited, Kharagpur. Proficient Vision Solutions Private Limited has developed a product named Clear Vision: Real-time removal of bad weather (viz. rain and fog) effects from videos. The product’s proposed algorithm works only on the intensity component of the video as opposed to other approaches that work on all the colour components. It also requires a lower number of consecutive video frames for the removal of rain and fog. Real time Rain and fog removal could greatly improve the performance of various tasks like self-steering, traffic signal recognition and may reduce the delays in various transportation services.

 

  1. M/s EyeROV (IROV Technologies Private Limited) Kerala. EyeROV provides advanced underwater inspection services using proprietary product EyeROV TUNA - ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle). EyeROV TUNA is a micro-ROV to perform Visual inspection/survey of submerged structures. It is a cost-effective underwater intervention to do work up to a depth of 200m. The product also has provision to attach external sensors like SONARS, NDT testing equipment etc. The product can be used for dam inspection, ship hull inspection, fish farm inspection, port structure inspection, bridge foundation inspection etc.

 

  1. M/s Fabheads Automation Private Limited, Chennai. Traditionally, making parts with carbon fiber material has been a very expensive, laborious and time consuming process. Fabheads’ indigenous carbon fiber layup technology solves this problem by automating the whole process of manufacturing with this material.  The company’s FibrBot series of 3D printers allows users to 3D print strong lightweight parts which can be used for various applications across sectors including drones, automotive, aerospace, marine, etc.  The technology reduces the material wastage compared to traditional methods of fabrication making it more cost efficient.

 

  1. M/s Plabeltech Private Limited, Bhopal. The company has developed the Gly-tag® platform. These lead antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) exhibit selective anti-proliferative activity towards the antigen-positive breast cancer cells. They target the breast cancer cells at very low concentrations without harming the healthy cells and are primed to help patients with aggressive type HER2-positive breast cancer. 

 

  1. M/s Breathe Applied Sciences Private Limited, Bengaluru. Breathe has successfully translated the laboratory scale CO2 conversion to methanol to the pilot scale. They have engineered the conversion unit (vapour phase plug flow reactor) with a capacity of gram scale CO2 per day to 300 kg CO2 per day utilization. 

 

  1. M/s CYRAN AI Solutions, Delhi. The company has designed and developed a unique and patented invention-BUDDHI AI DIY Kit® (BUDDHI stands for “Build Understand Design Deploy Human-like Intelligence”). It is an interactive DIY (Do-It-Yourself) educational kit that can be used to quickly learn the potential of AI, the basics of AI, and build AI-based real-world projects without prior domain knowledge. 

 

  1. M/s Theranautilus Pvt Ltd. , Bengaluru. Theranautilus’s device can be used to guide the nanorobots to their targets deep inside the dentinal tubules. Once the nanorobots reach the bacterial infestation site, they can be remotely activated to deploy their antibacterial mechanism. This novel solution minimizes root canal failure, which currently afflicts up to 14-16% of the millions of root canal treatment procedures performed every year globally.

 

  1. M/s SynThera Biomedical Private Limited, Pune. The company has produced PoroSyn® bioactive synthetic bone graft which has been developed in granule & block form and used in surgical procedures to regenerate and repair bone in areas of bone loss within the body caused by injuries, disease and congenital deformities. PoroSyn’s technology has been patented in India and patents have been filed in the US, Europe, China and South Korea.

 

  1. M/s Multi Nano Sense Technologies Private Limited, Nagpur.  Multi Nano Sense Technologies (MNST) Private Limited indigenously developed Hydrogen sensors, solid state electrochemical sensors with a solid electrolyte and novel reference electrode (‘SSEC Technology’) and solved several critical challenges in Hydrogen sensing faced by traditional technologies like catalytic combustion and metal oxide semiconductor, like cross sensitivity, interference etc. MNST has developed a Patented Platform, CMOS MEMS Omni-Gas Sensing technology (‘MEMS Technology’).The MEMS technology can potentially analyse, qualitatively and quantitatively, different gases and potentially function as a pocket GC, when coupled with a MEMS Micro-column. It can respond within microseconds with high levels of reliability, selectivity, and accuracy across trace levels to 100% purity. 

 

  1. M/s Noccarc Robotics Private Limited, Pune.  Noccarc Robotics Private Limited designed and developed a fully functional indigenous V310 ICU Ventilator in collaboration with SIIC IIT Kanpur and commercialized to treat COVID-19 patients. Noccarc V310 is clinically validated and certified for IEC 60601-1 standards. The company also developed Noccarc H210 a High Flow Oxygen Therapy Device which provides respiratory support to the patient at a less critical stage by delivering high flow warmed and humidified oxygen-rich air through a nasal interface. The device is certified for IEC 60601-1 and IEC 60601-1-2 standards.