Tech-based dry cleaners, kiosk to take quick printouts

Chennai: A kiosk to take quick printouts, a tech-based dry cleaners, building nano satellites, and teaching robotics to school kids using bots were some of the innovative ideas of students and young entrepreneurs displayed at the startup expo conducted at IIT Madras on Saturday.As part of the 3-day entrepreneurship summit, more than 200 startups displayed their products and innovation to attract investors.
"In the universities and colleges, there will be long queues to take printouts. In this kiosk, students can scan a QR code and upload their documents. Upon payment, they can take printouts. The entire exercise will take one or two minutes, and it would ensure there are no queues," said Subeshwar P of Qwikprint, a startup.Students who faced the problem of dry cleaning during their college days came up with the idea for a laundry tech startup. "We built a tech-enabled laundry infrastructure for university campuses. We can save up to 70% of water and CO2 by using technology effectively. Customers can monitor how their clothes are being cleaned and ironed in real time," said Daksh Sabharwal, chief marketing officer of Dhobi G.The summit also had a boot camp for startups. "There are 5 tracks - AI and deep tech, healthcare, energy and sustainability, sector agnostic, and fintech. From each track, 10 startups participated in the boot camp. They met with a certified industry mentor. There will be a grand finale on Sunday to select the winners," said Atharva Kokate, core member, E-summit, IIT Madras.In total, 700 startups registered for the boot camp, and 50 were shortlisted for the boot camp after two rounds. There are 20 incubators that conducted meetings with 110 startups in the i-summit. Students also pitched their ideas at the pitchfest.Students attended workshops and talks on various topics, including artificial intelligence and content creating, among other topics.