India’s entrepreneurial prowess has always been accepted and appreciated globally. The last few years especially have seen

number of initiatives and success stories, boosting start-ups and bringing an attitudinal shift towards embracing starting up. However, the genesis of Catapooolt Changemakers Challenge lies in two key things that we felt were still missing from the ecosystem – one, the focus on thinking beyond the conventional and really disrupt-ing existing models to find new ideas and secondly, the involve-ment of communities at large to be part of discovering and supporting these ideas.Thus was born India’s first-ever

hunt for disruptive ideas – to be powered by crowdfunding, which is increasingly becoming the new global norm of funding for all new ideas and entrepreneurial ventures. So much so that by next year, it is estimated that crowdfunding would be funding ideas to the tune of $36 Billion – crossing the total volume of funding even by Venture Capital industry overall!The Catapooolt Changemakers

Challenge thus went through sev-eral stages in an endeavour to achieve the said objectives.The first task was to reach out to

potential ‘Innovation Champions’ across various industries and start up funds – experts, who have lived through multitude of ideas and have converted some of these into multi-million businesses. And to have as diverse experience as pos-sible – we scanned innovation be-lievers across industrial domains – and finally got on board a Jury which represented the best-of-

idea talent across sectors like fi-nance, manufacturing, media, funding and even Silicon Valley! (see our jury)With this, the stage was set. We

then announced the hunt for ideas and partnered with several ecosys-tem players to help us broadbase our reach. And we even kept a nominal entry fees – so that only those who really believe that their ideas truly deserve to be part of this Challenge, would come on board. Eventually, more than 500 teams came to us – and we forwarded all these to our jury of ‘Innovation Champions’ – leveraging their expertise to help us scan through and finally narrow down to 55 ideas, that could be disruptive as well as financially feasible as long term sustainable businesses. These ideas represented various do-mains – including healthcare, education services, consumer prod-ucts, Internet of Things and platforms. Now was the turn to

bring in communities. So we asked all these 55 founders to turn to social media and get votes for their ideas from the com-munities. The experience itself was enriching for the few of the short-listed ideas – as they mentioned that this was perhaps the first time ever that they ever spoke about what they working on, beyond their limited coterie of friends and actually were surprised to see words of encouragement from their extended social network. This indeed is one of the biggest self-implied block that Indian entrepre-

neurs go through – they shy away from either sharing their ideas, till its too late, or shy away from seek-ing out help – and breaking this habit was one of the core objective behind Catapooolt Changemakers Challenge.Finally, it were 30 ideas that are

now competing in the penultimate stage of the challenge – and here you get to read the founder and idea summaries of all of them! And this is going to be the most interest-ing part of the challenge – as each of these ideas have now made their video pitches – so that all of you can feel the energy and passion

behind these founders – and most importantly – actually be-

come part of their jour-neys!

Yes – these campaigns – starting today – are launching their crowd-

funding campaign on Catapooolt – and each one of them have been given fixed monetary tar-gets to raise (Rs 50,000 ). Now, you can read all about these campaigns and contribute anything

between Rs 500 to Rs 5000 wherein your funds will not only help these ideas with critical early support that they need – but will act like a fuel to help them move to the next and final stage of the challenge – wherein top 15 ideas will finally be pitching their decks to some of India’s leading angel investors and seeking mentoring and funding support to launch their ideas into full blown sustainable businesses.So go ahead, discover some of

India’s most disruptive ideas and be part of their future with Catapooolt.

A CONSUMER CONNECT INITIATIVE

The Economic Times Presents

Catapooolt Changemakers Challenge

India’s innovation champions and a crowdfunding platform discover top 30 disruptive start-up ideasCATAPOOOLTING INNOVATION

‘Catapooolt Changemakers Challenge’ in association with The Economic Times is India’s first crowdfunding powered hunt for disruptive ideas. The goal was to recognize potentially new ideas across various domains from India – which could bring disruption globally – and then to enable these ideas have access to communities as well as seasoned investors for fur-ther support. More than 500 ideas submitted their entries – which were then sieved through by a jury of Innovation Champions. Fifty-five of these ideas made it to a social media voting stage wherein communities helped to shortlist the final 30. Now these 30 ideas will pitch for your support; the top 15 ideas will be presenting themselves to leading angel investors at the grand finale. The 30 ideas that were selected ranged across agriculture, healthcare, transporta-tion. Let’s have a closer look at the innovations which could change your tomorrow.

TOP 30 Innovations That Could Change Your Future

Miten MehtaEntrepreneur, Angel Investor, Board Member, 63 Moons

Jaspreet BindraSenior VP, Digital Innovation

and Ecommerce, M&M

Devesh ChawlaFounder, Chatur Ideas

Guneet SinghHead of Marketing

Solutions, IN & SEA, Google

JURY METHODOLOGYWe had 11 esteemed innovation champi-ons as part of our jury and each jury was given a list of 50 ideas - and were asked to suggest top 5 ideas as per various criterion including team strength, idea practicality & maturity, potential and overall disruption feasibility. In case two or more jury mem-bers suggested same ideas - they were sub-sequently requested to suggest next-best ideas. Thus a final list of 55 ideas was ar-rived at - which were then shortlisted for so-cial media voting stage.

Startup India is a flagship initiative of the govern-ment intended to build a strong ecosystem for nur-

turing innovation and startups in the country that will drive sustain-able economic growth and gener-ate large-scale employment op-portunities. The government through this initiative aims to em-power startups to grow through innovation and design. Last year, Prime Minister

N a r e n d r a M o d i i n h i s Independence Day speech an-nounced the ‘Startup India’ ini-tiative. The objective is that India must become a nation of job creators instead of being a na-tion of job seekers. The Prime Minister formally launched the initiative on January 16 from Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. The event was at-tended by a vast number of young Indian entre-preneurs (over 2,000) who have embarked on the journey of entrepre-

neurship through startups. Fostering a fruitful culture of inno-

vation in the country is a long and important journey. This initiative will go a significant way in reiterat-ing Government of India’s commit-ment to making India the hub of innovation, design and startups. In order to meet the objectives of

the initiative, the government has announced an Action Plan that ad-dresses all aspects of the startup ecosystem. With this Action Plan, the government hopes to accelerate spreading of

the startup movement from digi-tal/ technology sector to a wide array of sectors, including agricul-ture, manufacturing, social sector, healthcare, education, etc. Besides, it also intends to spread the move-ment from existing Tier 1 cities to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, including semi-urban and rural areas.The Action Plan is divided across

simplification and handholding, funding support and incentives and industry-academia partner-ship and incubation.

Startup India key to India’s transformation

I see startups, technology and innovation as exciting and effective instruments for India’s transformation.Narendra Modi Prime Minister, India

Today, across the world – it is the communities and people – who have proven themselves as the biggest

enabler of innovation. And this is augmented by the fact that today Crowdfunding is almost a $ 30 bil-lion market – becoming even big-ger than venture capital as the source of funding for new ideas. The graph (right) correlates rela-

tive positions that countries stand on the Global Innovation Index (2015) – and the estimated crowdfunding volumes in these countries. As this reflects – today, it is the people and communities

– which are constantly pushing countries higher on the overall in-novation index.India ranks 81 among 141 coun-

tries, well behind middle income countries, such as Brazil, China and South Africa. But in the Central and Southern Asia region, it is on top spot. The report says India’s strength lies in knowledge diffu-sion (ranked 34th), research and development (44th), general in-frastructure (43rd) and invest-ment (42nd). On innovation qual-ity, it ranks third among middle

income countries, behind Brazil.In contrast to India’s lacklustre

performance in conventional measures, other sources are al-most breathless about the seem-ingly boundless creative energy in

India. Headlines like ‘India the world’s secret Silicon Valley’

and ‘India’s innovation stimulus’ herald a new type of innovative ac-tivity popularised variously as ‘fru-gal innovation’ or ‘Gandhian inno-vation’. This also implies that the Indian startup ecosystem has the potential to deliver product and services which then perhaps would be emulated worldwide. They say when ideas are backed by communities – they become revo-lutions! Such is the idea of Crowdfunding. It can be one strong medium to connect ‘Make in India’ with the Indians. The country, with a thriving startup ecosystem, still has limited number of early stage investors – while several potential supporters are still either outside or on the fringes – not getting the right platform to identify strong ideas or having limited risk appe-tite. But with a medium like crowd-funding – which lets anyone dis-cover the next set of ideas and be part of them with just a few hun-dred rupees – a lot more can hap-pen and empower ideas with the power of communities.

Let India Make India

The Changemakers Challenge

Amitabh BhattacharyaFounding Partner,

Nomad Films

Subhrangshu NeogiDirector Group Marketing &

Brand, Religare

Abhijeet KumarCo-founder, ah!Ventures

MENTOR POINTAn expert board of mentors from crowdfunding and community en-gagement platform Catapooolt’s inno-vation partners have scanned more than 500 submitted entries and short-listed 250 Ideas. Fifty-five of these ide-as made it to social media voting stage and the communities helped shortlist the final 30. Our stellar board can truly be termed as India’s Innovation Champions with a firm footing in the country’s startup community.

Sunil GoyalFounder & CEO, YourNest

Angel Fund

Neeraj Kumar SingalDirector & CEO, SEMCO

Ajeet KhuranaLeading Angel Investor

& Mentor

Sachin Tagra,Head Incubation,

Brand Capital

(Disclaimer: Individuals participated in their individual capacity, not as representatives of their organization.)

THE JURY

Truck Suvidha A web platform where trans-porters, truck owners, drivers can advertise, search and book easily.

ClayPlayIndia’s first online holiday tool.

CurefyAn award-winning mobile app that provides everyone with free consultations by doctors from the best hospi-tals 24x7.

PeeBuddyPeebuddy is India’s first fe-male urination device using which women can stand and pee in all common or un-friendly toilets.

Swasti Agro‘Vaccines’ for plants. A patent pending ‘eco- friendly’ prod-uct that prevents diseases and damage to crops.

Menias A healthcare startup with a goal to empower everyone make more informed deci-sions about their health. It makes people more confi-dent of their healthcare choices.

GenprotImplementing P4 medicine (Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, Participatory) in Indian healthcare system for patient-specific diagnos-tics and prenatal screening and storage of genome for disease causative variants.’

Tyre ExpressA one-stop shop for sourcing, financing and life cycle man-agement of tyres and acces-sories for fleet operators.

Smart Transportation SolutionsA futuristic solution to solving traffic, pollution and city problems. Experiencing per-sonal transportation benefits while using public transport model.

The QA multi-functional mobile ap-plication which helps you jump the queue by eliminat-ing queues as a concept across various sectors.

Yurif DesignA custom-fit garment venture which provides customized garment depending on indi-vidual body type and style via offline/online channel. It is unique with its style quotient and perfectly streamlined making process.

Lala ServicesNo more long queues at ser-vice stations. 24x7 road assis-tance that ‘makes the vehicle get back for your ride in min-utes of its breakdown’.

CarkhanaThe only automobile service in India that focuses on pro-viding quick and reliable car maintenance at your door-step.

ChangebhaiA strong analytics-driven plat-form, which is not only a ground issues reporting utili-ty but a one of its kind tool to check infrastructure data of any locality or around any point on a map for making better informed decisions.

Hiker InnovationsInnovative portable water bottle purifier. The hiker bot-tle purifies the water with UV technology making the water perfect to drink with just a touch of a button.

Smart Water BottleA smartphone connect smart water bottle that tracks your daily water intake and will glow to remind you if you are running behind your water intakegoal.

KADA Online Private LimitedAn online supermarket which collects scrap from customers house and gives grocery in return.

GrubNot just another app. It’s your mobile assistance to discover good food in Delhi/NCR. Finally an answer to ‘What to eat’ rather than where to eat. Grub provides you with pop-ular dishes based upon your location.

ThermaissanceThermaissance is a function-al, comfortable and stylish clothing line for cancer, dialy-sis, dementia and diabetes patients having easy access panels with zip closures placed at the chest, stomach and arms/sleeves allowing doctors to examine the body part while rest of the body being covered.

KleverMindOne-click cloud-based nurs-ery admission platform wherein parents need to fill only one form to apply to multiple schools.

GamoozAn interactive books platform for book publishers allowing them to add fun and interac-tivity to their printed books.

InloyalA mobile loyalty wallet where you can manage all your loy-alty cards, track reward points and offers across card and re-deem points with pay by points in one app.

SwiftChillAn innovative beverage chill-er that chills beverages al-most instantly without com-promising on its quality. It helps you consume it at the right drinking temperature.

Digital GorkhaDigital Gorkha provides mo-bile-based solutions to solve the age-old problem of man-ually noting down visitors in a log book and providing badges.

FxchngFxchng is the first of its kind social classified platform which connects buyers and sellers through their mutual friends –’Creating Trusted Communities’.

Weekend WorksUber for scrap collection. Junkart is a real-time market-place for selling junk and old goods in a transparent and reliable way. It organizes and exploits the existing ecosys-tem for scrap collection with technology.

AwesummlyFastest news discovery and consumption. An automated news summary app in 12+ languages and in 35+ coun-tries serving most read, pop-ular and most relevant news. Real time news summary of your interest.

Wich PleaseA fresh sandwich company with innovation, technology and supply chain model.

IT’S YOUR TURN TO DISCOVER SOME OF

INDIA’S MOST DISRUPTIVE IDEAS AND BE PART OF

THEIR FUTURE WITH CATAPOOOLT

ALL FINALISTS WILL GET MARKETING AND FUNDING SUPPORT FROM ASKME BAZAAR

Log onto www.catapooolt.com and support these ideas now.

THE ECONOMIC TIMES, NEW DELHI, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016

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