Celebrating the Land of Opportunities

By helping participants explore opportunities in our society’s biggest challenges, E Week India aims to trigger a thousand world-changing ideas
 
Opportunity: Anaemia is the single largest cause of maternal mortality in India. 1 million deaths a year are directly caused by anaemia around the world.
Solution: Darshan Nayak’s Biohsense produces a portable and affordable easy-to-use device for point-of-care screening and monitoring of anaemia for rural India.
Impact: 3,000 women to be screened for anaemia in primary healthcare centres in Parol and Bhatane in Maharashtra for a pilot study.
 
Opportunity: India is 35% energy deficient
Solution: Using cotton stock for biomass energy generation. Siddhartha Srivastava’s startup VisViva is organizing a robust form of collection of cotton stock from farmers, to enable renewable energy generation for furnaces. Two briquette units have been set up on a revenue sharing basis with farmers to produce eco-friendly fuel. 
Impact: A supplement to coal, the biomass energy generated by each unit is equivalent to lighting up ten villages. In addition, 4000 farmers in 50 villages in Maharashtra have benefited with a 15% increase in revenue through sale of cotton stock.
 
Opportunity: Tough competition to get into the country’s best professional institutes. 12,00,000 applications for 4,000 seats in IITs, 5,50,000 seats for 350 seats in IAS. Almost 80% of these applicants are from Tier II and III cities that don’t have good training facilities to face this competition.
Solution: VMukti, founded by Hardik Sanghvi, has tied up with three leading preparatory schools to provide tele-education through an online video communication platform to students in Tier II and III cities.
Impact: In one month, 1,000 students have enrolled in 5 Tier II cities. Reach to increase to 50 Tier II and III cities by March-end.
 
Three young startups make a difference in the lives of 8,000 people. Imagine the impact if there are thousands of such startups transforming India’s challenges into opportunities?