The team of three, Aashish Dattani, 21, Sriram Kalyanaraman, 24, and Vinayshankar Kulkami, 24, got free tickets to travel to New York from India in the last leg of the competition. Their venture, Greenext Technology Solutions, was one of three finalists from among a group of 10 submissions from some of the foremost universities around the world.
Imagine winning a prize for making New York City cleaner and more efficient, and then getting the wherewithal to set up your company in the Big Apple.
A team from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has won the NYC Next Idea 2009 Global Business Competition, an international business plan contest that fetches them a $20,000 prize and help from the city to set up their startup. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the winners Jan. 7.
"We are pretty elated, it was a tough competition right from the start," Kalyanaraman told News India Times.
The competition was sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) with the goal of attracting groundbreaking startups to the city.
"Cities around the world hope to be a place of innovation where entrepreneurs want to go to launch businesses," Bloomberg was quoted as saying, in a news release. "New York City doesn't have to hope – we are that place."
This was the first year of the competition. Bloomberg said he was working with the Obama administration to improve immigration regulations so that talent from around the world could come and set up shop in the city. "No one can say for sure whether the finalists' ideas will translate into successful job-creating businesses. What a shame, though, if they and countless others are denied the opportunity even to try," he said.
In addition to the cash prize, the winning team is being offered free space within one of the city's new business incubators for two years.
Composed of current students and IIT alumni, Greenext focused on supplying reliable and clean energy to the city. The product, XEstor, that they developed, serves as a common interface to store energy from any source across New York City in large battery storage sites.
XEstor communicates with the electric grid and combines real-time consumer demand information with current energy prices to charge or discharge electricity to the grid.
The mechanism is flexible and able to release or store energy based on demand, the presenters said. It can act as a backup power source to bridge supply gaps and maintain the grid's reliability through ancillary services such as regulation and emergency response, they contend.
Asked if the technology was only applicable to this particular city or country, Kalyanaraman indicated it needed a high level of technological development.
"The technology is not really exclusive because if you look at the need, it is very generic in the electric grid, and could be applied to other parts of United States," he said.
"What allows us to do it here is the level of technological development and the government push. So, in some sense, it is exclusive to this place. Back in India, where only one in three households have electricity, we still have issues. It would take a decade before we could apply it there."
The company wants to focus on pioneering specialized software and hardware solutions for utility companies, renewable energy producers, energy storage manufacturers, and energy traders.
Dattani, a final year student in the Department of Computer Science at IIT Madras, is focusing on artificial intelligence and efficient algorithms, and worked on the algorithms and computing side of the product.
Kalyanaraman, a computer science and engineering graduate, has worked with McKinsey & Co. as a business analyst and is currently on assignment at Pratham, a nonprofit working to provide primary education to underprivileged children. His interests are in business strategy and sustainable economic development.
Kulkarni, a mechanical engineering graduate, works with Shell Technology India as a project engineer. His interests are project management, carbon capture and storage, and issues related to climate change.
The three were assisted by Midhun Salim and Kaushik Anand, who could not travel to New York for the final presentation.
Fifteen leading business and engineering universities from countries across Asia, Latin America and Europe signed up to participate in the contest, and 10 teams submitted final proposals. The three teams of finalists representing business and engineering schools in France, Spain and India were in New York City the week starting Jan. 4 to present their plans. Business plans targeted sectors such as financial services, media and technology, green technology and bioscience. The three final plans were a new screening product for infectious diseases, a zero-emission bike-share program and Greenext's clean energy idea.
"At the end of all this, the results show a lot of the effort of students at HT. The idea continues to be developed as part of the work they are doing there with professors and advisers in Chennai. This was just an opportunity to apply that," Dattani told News India Times.
Kulkarni said the team would return to India and mull over how to move forward. "We intend to build the prototype by end of this year.
"And by the next year, things should be probably near completion and would be back here to do the startup", he said. He conceded that prize money of $20,000 would not be enough to start. "But as all business plan competitions go, it starts off with an idea. We have already presented to investors. Today, we are going to start thinking about how to fund it."
At least four of the five judges on the panel Jan.7 were partners or CEOs in investment companies. The team hopes that the exposure the city has given them will result in investment support.
"The biggest challenge is to take things forward," Kulkarni emphasized.
