New Delhi/Alappuzha: A video conferencing software developed by a company led by a Malayali is ready for India.
The first place in the Innovation Challenge announced by the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT during the lockdown was bagged by the V-consol software developed by Techgentsia Software Technologies, which is led by Keralite Joy Sebastian.
Techgentsia, based at Infopark in Pallipuram, will get Rs 1 crore and also a three-year contract to set up video conferencing facilities in central government institutions as the prize for winning the competition.
This will be done by using the V-consol software through the National Informatics Center (NIC), says the agreement. An annual maintenance grant of Rs 10 lakh will also be provided.
Joy Sebastian, a native of Poonkavu, Alappuzha, is the managing director and chief executive officer of TechGenia. All but one of the five directors of the company are Malayalis.
Alternative for Zoom, Google Meet
V-Consol will replace the popular video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet in government offices. The software supports eight Indian vernacular languages, including Malayalam.
“It needs a large investment infrastructure to take the software to the common man. There is currently no possibility for that. I hope this award will lead to that,” said Joy Sebastian.
Selection process
Announcing the winner on Thursday, Union Minister for Electronics & IT Ravishankar Prasad said India has come up with world-class video conferencing solutions in just four months. "We are committed to developing India’s software product and mobile app economy in a big way and efforts like this will go a long way in that direction,” he said.
The ministry had announced the competition to develop a video conferencing solution on April 12, 2020, under the Digital India Initiative.
The three-stage competition was open for industries, start-ups and individual experts. The response was overwhelming. The 1,983 submissions were pruned to 12 and each applicant was given Rs 10 lakh to develop the prototype. The prototypes were then evaluated by a jury of senior government officers, academicians and members from the IT industry. They shortlistlisted five applicants for building a ready-to-market product. Three of the shortlisted applicants were given Rs 20 lakh and the remaining two were provided with Rs 15 lakh. In the end, the jury picked Vconsol as the winner.
The jury decided to offer Rs 25 lakh each to three companies - Sarv Wave (Jaipur), Insta VC (Hyderabad), HydraMeet (Chennai) - to fine-tune their products for three months.
