Qure AI and Neodocs Healthcare win big at the AI Gamechanger awards, organised to felicitate innovation across sectors using Artificial Intelligence on Thursday.

The last day of the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), of which India is the chair for in 2024, saw a shark-tank like summit with pitches from several AI use case startups in domains of healthcare, agriculture and gene mapping to name a few.

While Qure ai, a company into accessible, affordable, and timely assistance to healthcare professionals won the first spot along with Neodocs Healthcare which provides instant lab tests on smartphones, other winners in the event were Drona maps and Nayan India Science and Technology for geospatial mapping who bagged the second spot together. The third prize was claimed by Nam.AI and Kerala-based Genrobotic innovations, which has devised AI physiotherapy models for neurological disorders.

The closing ceremony marked the consensus on India building AI-based ecosystem based on trust. Close to 8500 students were trained in AI out of which 10 students were selected and felicitated as part of the AI gamechangers awards.

Sahayak, a health information app was also felicitated in the ceremony.

The jury for the event consisted of leading experts from science, technology and civil society, including Ministry of Electronics, Information and Technology (MeitY) S Krishnan along with additional MeitY Secretary and career civil servant with 28 yrs of experience in policy formulation, Abhishek Singh. Other jury members included Harshjeet Sethi, who advises on investments in early-stage businesses and is behind successful fintech and SaaS, consumer internet platforms like Freshworks and Darwinbox. He also led the Sarvam.ai investment by Peak XV. Arpit Agarwal, investment partner at Blume Ventures and Howard Lacuna, senior program officer at Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as well as tech evangelist Pankaj Thakkar and Anirudh Suri of India Internet fund were also present. Ms. Kavitha Bhatia - group coordinator for emerging technologies was also a part of the judgement team.

The AI game changers award aims to celebrate impactful AI solutions for responsible AI, enabling AI entrepreneurs and innovators from diverse backgrounds

The startups were allowed to pitch for five minutes with three minutes designated for jury questions.

Areete Business Solution was the first to present, a cattle health solutions company by Srinivas Subramanian, Dr Swapna Sen and Swapnil Lonkar who come with corporate experience in legacy brands like Tata, Godrej and Aditya Birla Group.

The startup, which derives its name from the Greek word for passion and purpose in life, taps into the opportunity for milk production.

Subramanian said it comprises 5% or Rs 9.3 lakh crores in India’s GDP with challenges like 1% supply but 7% demand for milk, missed reproduction, no data on Indian breeds, sickness and mortality and reduced yield.

The company has come up with an IoT solution to monitor cattle health via Ayushman Cowfit, which is like a smartwatch for cows and monitors over 10 parameters of each cow every10 minutes, sending it to an internal server. The smartwatch works on proprietary AI server which works across different breeds and gives data given on mobile apps, in local Indian languages and also gives guidance by fertility experts who guide farmers if they miss a symptom in their cattle. To scale production, the company has partnered with Bharat Electronics as well as the largest NGO, which was started by Mahatma Gandhi.

Areete aims for Rs 6.5 crore revenue through sale of 10,000 units by the end of March 2024, and aims to bring down the pricing of the product to Rs 3500 from existing Rs 6000.

Winner Drona Maps is a Decision support platform to enable decision making on the back of reality capture, with Data that is integrated with GIS, MIS. The company has conducted a drone study on large agricultural land in Punjab which was also published in a noted journal. The company presented use cases for rural link roads and highways, Covid response and the like. The founders said they are working with companies like Larsen and Toubro Infotech (LTI) and run integrations with the likes of KPMG. The Drone industry is worth USD 50 billion with a competitive edge of cost versus stage of functioning for competitive edge, as per the company presentation. The platform also allows for the scope of collection in data since AI is not perfect. Their data goes through Gen AI to large language models (LLM), enabling decision making on simulations.

Through their business model, the company charge on deployment basis and became cash flow positive in 2019 with a 70-30 revenue split between private and government which got to 80-20 for government and private respectively in the Covid period. The company has seen a jump of 15cr for next year after 50 percent of government and private scale.

 Genrobotics medical and mobility, co-founded by Afzal Muttikkal has previously deployed innovations for India’s cleantech industry, with manual manholes converted to robot-holes. The innovation won the National Startup Award in 2020 for pressing social issues solved through robotics.

The company presented an innovation to treat Gait disability, a neurological issue wherein conventional methods of treatment lack accuracy. AI enabled machinery for personalised Gait pattern detection is proven to help in physical therapy, which fills the gap of not even a single trained physiotherapist for every 10,000 patients affected. Through government, NGO and private partners a person can avail therapy for free or maximum Rs 1,000 a day, even as the machine costs Rs 1.5 crores with a 30% production margin included.

Nayan India science and technology Pvt Ltd is headquartered in Delhi and also in Dubai, which enables visual data collection across various territories. The company has an order book of Rs 19 crore, having raised $ 1.5 million and partnerships with US Defence Services and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company has incentivised data collection through electronics in a Pokemon-like model to predict accidents and insurance mishaps.