Amrita Technology Business Incubator to invest $200,000 in three startups

CHENNAI: Three startups -- Yellow Messenger, Linksmart DNA and Bookmydiamond.com -- have emerged as winners of PitchFest 2018 organised 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 startup that secures products and packages from counterfeiting, tampering, refill and warranty fraud.
Bookmydiamond.com is a technology platform that helps jewellery retailers to search a live inventory of loose and certified diamonds and buy them.
Krishnashree Achuthan, CEO of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI), said," “This year, Amrita TBI focused on selecting startups that have successfully combined innovative technologies with a high impact on India’s development. We are delighted to see startups 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 startups, is very encouraging. This shows that the government’s efforts to make entrepreneurship a mainstream career choice is gaining traction.”
More than 800 startups 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, 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 startup 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 central government’s department of science and technology, Norwest Ventures, Springforth Capital Advisors and a few angel investors judged the startups at Amrita TBI’s PitchFest 2018.
Amrita TBI is supported by the Government of India and is recognised under the Startup India programme. Amrita TBI has incubated 83 startups and mentored 216 startup ideas and is among the few to see close to 100% success rate with its startup investments.