Furthering its commitment towards accelerating hardware innovation and entrepreneurship in India, Intel Indiarecently hosted the 2nd edition of Plugin Startups Demo Day as part of the Intel India Maker Lab program in Bengaluru. At the event, 11 startups showcased innovative products and solutions developed by them as part of Plugin, a collaborative incubation program between Intel India, Department of Science and Technology (DST) - Government of India and Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) - Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.

As part of the initiative this year, these startups worked on their prototypes by leveraging key tools & platforms, funding, mentorship and ecosystem connect from Intel India Maker Lab in Bengaluru and SINE IIT-Bombay to develop products and solutions. Through the use of exponential technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, IoT (Internet of Things), Cloud and Edge computing, the current batch of startups developed innovative products and solutions that can advance digitalization by solving some real life problems in key industries like healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transportation.

Out of the 11 startups, 5 startups have revenue generating products, 3 are doing customer trials, another 3 are in the final product stage of product development. The Plugin Startups Demo Day offered them a platform to showcase their products and solutions to the industry, including potential investors and hardware startup accelerators.

Speaking on the occasion, Nivruti Rai, Country Head Intel India and VP Data Center Group, Intel Corp, said, “Intel India is deeply committed towards advancing innovation and entrepreneurship in the hardware and systems space that maximizes the use of data-centric technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud and Edge computing to develop exciting products and solutions. This paves the way for India to become a product innovation hub for the world. Underlining this commitment, the third batch of startups from Intel India Maker Lab have developed exciting products for both local and global markets. Many of these products are already in the market, generating revenue and other products look equally promising; we hope to see them achieve greater heights soon. In this effort, we deeply value our collaboration with DST and SINE, IIT-Bombay.”

Dr Anita Gupta, Associate Head, NSTEDB (National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board), DST, Government of India, said, “Furthering its commitment towards creating an enabling ecosystem for innovative startups with a focus on hardware systems and products, DST initiated the Plugin program, a partnership with Intel and SINE, IIT-Bombay to promote startups to develop new products that deliver remarkable innovations. Through the program, we encourage startups that have real solutions to problems of the society, to shape their idea into commercially scalable products. It’s very encouraging to see very innovative products and solutions from the second batch of the Plugin startups from segments like healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transportation. We are proud to collaborate with Intel India and SINE, IIT Bombay for Plugin as together they bring a lot of value along with technical & industry expertise to the program.”