Balaji's file tracking system

TePP innovator Balaji Sowmyanarayanan narrates his experiences and plans in an interview with Mutiny.in.

He may soon get his first paying customer.

Business plan compeition on TePP innovations

Metamorphis organised at ISB is a business plan competition with a difference. The bright youngsters have to come with an innovative business plan matching the innovative content of 10 selected TePP innovations. Registration opens on 26th October and closes on 29th.
Want to take the challenge- jump in now.

agripreneurs

Small Farmer's Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC) has invited proposals for venture funding in small agri business projects. SFAC also provides grants for preparation of DPR( Detailed Project Reports). Assistance under the scheme will be available to Individuals, Farmers, Producer Groups,
Partnership / Proprietary firms, Self help groups, Companies, agripreneurs, units in agriexport
zones, and Agriculture graduates Individually or in groups.

For details see: http://www.sfacindia.com/index.asp

Samruddhi

RIN’s (Rural Innovations Network) key project ‘Samruddhi’ has won 3^rd prize in “The BiD Challenge India 2007”in Business Start-up category. The Business in Development (BiD) Challenge India 2007 is the Indian chapter of a series of Business Plan competition conducted globally by “Business in Development (BiD) Network”, a Netherlands based foundation that promotes the growth of small and medium enterprise as future vehicle for economic growth.

Flowering Innovation at trec-step

Highlights of some innovations incubated at trec-step have been provided by Sri RMP Jawahar.

Mr. Karthikeyan is a young incubatee entrepreneur who is now working on array digital X ray technology. He is planning to bring down the cost of Digital X Ray machines and C arms, from minimum of Rs 25 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs, while substantially improving quality and eco-benefits. The quality of results achieved so far, has been greatly appreciated by orthopedics.

Mr. Malaravan is working on Rice Sorter which shall remove coloured (black and brown) rice and improve the price of per kg by Rs 1. Though some Japanese and Korean Machines are available in the market, he is developing a better throughput machine with higher quality sorting. This done by improved design of sorting process by using enhanced PCB Cameras, eliminating multiple processing, high response pneumatic solenoid valve and specially designed nozzles for separating the impurities etc.

The Julie Flora ( Karu Velam in Tamil, Babool Tree in Hindi) is a firewood tree in dry lands across India. After collecting the thicker stems and branches for fire wood, the farmers leave the wastaes which contain thorns and small branches in the land itself which is then burnt openly causing pollution. Now an Engineer Mr.Kannappan and a farmer Mr.Paneerselvam came together and they have designed and fabricated a tractor mounted pulverizer for collecting these cut wastes which is sold to open biomass power plants and open market like hot cakes. The cut wastes have better calorific value since the thorns have higher volatile material and also nearly two thirds of the fire woods wastes have been collected back.

Transforming kinetic energy caused by rumbling machines into electrical energy

Several proposals are received under TePP to convert kinetic energy into electrical energy. Except few cases, most of such proposals were not supported, considering the engineering challenges. It is interesting to note that parallel efforts in UK has brought out commercial product called micro generators. The PMG17 microgenerators are intended for use on machinery driven by AC motors and harvest the commonly-found "twice-line-frequency" vibration. Even with as little as 25mg (RMS) vibration within a 2Hz bandwidth, they will always produce a minimum power of 0.5mW, while delivering up to 40mW when there is more vibration available. Powering wireless sensor nodes is one industrial application.

Design innovation

How complex a design has to be to be accepted as innovative?
See design for bicycle stand.

Top 12 start-up tips

David Cohen has the following tips for start-ups:

The twelve major tips are:

1. Be the best in the world at something.
2. Find and engage great mentors.
3. Listen more than you talk.
4. Accept that your ideas are likely to be wrong.
5. Be picky.
6. Scratch your own itch.
7. Obsess over core metrics.
8. Be tiny.
9. Get it out there.
10. Prove the market.
11. Sprint early and often.
12. Get up from your computer.