The Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ annual Carbon Zero Challenge 2022 competition will focus on sustainability innovations and eco ventures. The theme for the third edition is circularity in resources conservation.
The competition aims to encourage contestants to think entrepreneurship and sustainability. A start-up seed grant and funding for prototypes and training to develop market ready ventures will be provided to shortlisted teams. Winners will receive ₹10 lakh as start-up seed grant and access to the institute’s incubation resources and angel and venture capitalist funding.
Institute director V. Kamakoti, who launched the third edition of CZC on Wednesday, said the institute planned to establish a “School of Sustainability” and the CZC2022 would give a feel of challenges and technology needs that would enable to target research, course curriculum and other activities to meet the SDGs.
HomoSEP that helps in cleaning manholes was a product that received support in earlier editions of the contest. The third device had been given to the family member of a person who was engaged in manual scavenging, he said. The institute would open up its patenting mechanism to participants to get their innovations patented.
Principal coordinator of the contest Indumathi M. Nambi, a faculty in the Civil Engineering Department, said the competition would focus its target applicant pool on teams that had already demonstrated and validated lab-scale proof of concept with clear technological advancement.
Solutions should have low carbon, water and eco footprint and have a large societal impact, she said. Solutions could be deep technology, a new business model or an app-based inventory, including either individually or a combination of IT, IoT, AI, data analysis and a new policy intervention.
The last date to apply for the contest is September 24. Contest details and application process is available at https://czeroc.in
