Jivoule Biofuels, a Hyderabad-based green energy startup founded by AIC-IIITH, has been chosen to receive funding from NITI Aayog under the Atal New India Challenge (ANIC), the Atal Innovation Mission's flagship programme, totaling Rs 2.5 crore.

The cash will be shared between Jivoule Biofuels and the animal husbandry platform Verdant Impact in Jaipur. Once the businesses have successfully completed the due diligence process, the cash will be dispersed.

A big part of achieving SDGs also included supporting People with Disabilities. Recognizing this, AIC-IIITH's SunQulp Tech has been selected for a grant of INR 50 Lakh from Biotech Ignition Grant (BIG), the largest early-stage biotech funding programme in India. BIG is the flagship programme of Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology.

"Catalyzing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through technology to become a thought leader in the domain of technology for social impact," is how AIC-IIITH describes its mission. This is in line with the mission of ANIC, which is to "search for, identify, support, and foster technology-based solutions that address sectoral concerns of societal relevance and national importance." Similar to BIG, AIC-goals IIITH's to "Validate prototypes and business models to help move India forward in attaining the U.N. SDGs" are aligned with BIG's mission to "provides the proper admixture of fuel and support to young businesses and entrepreneurial individuals." Thus, the tech-based social companies from AIC-IIITH are a wonderful fit for these initiatives.

Chandrasekhar Nandigama founded Jivoule Biofuels, which is attempting to build a compressed biogas factory near Hyderabad. In Tirupur, they only recently began running a biogas-based power producing facility. Animal husbandry platform Verdant Impact is led by founder and CEO Manish K. Prahlad. The platform gives farmers access to services like Animal ICU, a digital ecosystem for livestock healthcare, as well as backward and forward linkages for the buying and selling of livestock.

SunQulp started by the team of Amit Panwar (Founder) and Dushyant Kumar (Co-Founder) have created SmartVest, a low-cost, one of its kind, unique navigation solution for the visually impaired people to help them in their movement. It is a wearable vest that guides the wearer while walking by talking to them in human voice and gives them real-time information about their path and the obstacles to avoid, helping them go places with confidence.

Congratulating the Startups, Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, Director of AIC-IIITH said, "This financial investment by AIM and BIRAC in AIC-IIITH startups validates and reaffirms our approach of seeking to support the use of technology by social entrepreneurs to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges faced by India."

Jivoule Biofuels was part of AIC-IIITH'S Raftaar - Covid Acceleration Program supported by EPAM Systems as part of its ESG commitment. Verdant Impact and SunQulp Tech are part of the 3rd cohort of Akash, AIC-IIITH's Flagship Incubation Program. AIC-IIITH's Startups Jivoule Biofuels, Verdant Impact and Next Skills 360 were also part of various G20 startup meetings organized by the government across India.

The IIITH's social tech incubator, AIC-IIITH Foundation, operates several cohorts of social startups through programmes like Akash, its flagship incubator, and Dhanush Micro Incubation. Moreover, AIC-IIITH has launched initiatives that have been supported by funding given to startups by companies like EPAM, HDFC, and Pernod Ricard India Foundation. To to this point, AIC-IIITH has assisted more than 41 businesses, 300 employment, and INR 2+ Cr of funding across a variety of social impact sectors, including medtech, agritech, greentech, climate, and edtech. AIC-IIITH businesses have so far raised more than INR 75 crore in investment.