Yellow Messenger, Linksmart DNA, and Bookmydiamond.com – these three start-ups are the winners of PitchFest 2018 organized by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Technology Business Incubator. The University intends to invest $200,000 in these three ventures as seed investment.

• Yellow Messenger is a conversational Artificial Intelligence platform for enterprises to automate and orchestrate intelligent conversations with customers across channels: web, app, Alexa, Google Assistant, IVR, email, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter.
• Linksmart DNA is an IP-oriented mass market vertical start-up that secures products and packages from counterfeiting, tampering, re-fill, and warranty fraud.
• Bookmydiamond.com is a technology platform that helps jewelry retailers to search a live inventory of loose, certified diamonds, and buy them.

Said Dr. Krishnashree Achuthan, CEO of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI): “This year, Amrita TBI focused on selecting start-ups that have successfully combined innovative technologies with a high impact on India’s development. We are delighted to see start-ups coming up with ‘green solutions’ with a global appeal.”

Snehal Shetty, COO of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI), said: “The overwhelming response to this year’s Amrita TBI Pitchfest, especially the increase in the number and the quality of the start-ups, is very encouraging. This shows that the government’s efforts to make entrepreneurship a mainstream career choice is gaining traction.”

More than 800 start-ups from 22 states in India participated in the competition and showcased their ideas to potential investors and get incubation space at Amrita TBI. The sixth edition of the PitchFest this year was supported by Niti Aayog, Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India; Indian Angel Network; Freshers World, and SAP Startup Studio.

 The following two startups won the Amrita TBI PitchFest Special Mention awards:

• Saukhyam Pads: A producer of cost-effective and eco-friendly reusable sanitary pads made from banana fibre.
• Banashree: A start-up that develops advanced datapath architectures to reduce power consumption and lower costs for datapath-intensive integrated circuits (ICs) based on standard cell and custom IC design flows.

Representatives from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India; Norwest Ventures; Springforth Capital Advisors; and a few angel investors judged the start-ups at Amrita TBI’s PitchFest 2018. Several successful entrepreneurs and investors including R. Natarajan, COO and CFO of RNT Capital Ventures, and M Janakiraman, CEO, matrimony.com, addressed the participants.

Amrita TBI is supported by the Government of India and is recognized under the Start-up India programme. It was awarded the Department of Science and Technology’s best Incubator award for 2016-2017 by the President of India. Amrita TBI has incubated 83 startups and mentored 216 startup ideas, and has zero loss from its investments so far.