Press Release

NASSCOM CoE Incubated Startups Develop Solutions to Combat COVID-19

  • DronaMaps from CoE Gurugram has developed a Live Dashboard to track COVID19 patients &their activities; working with Haryana and Punjab Governments
  • BlinkIn from CoE Bangalore has provided remote tech support to install Air Handling Units at the COVID19 field hospital in Wuhan at a time when the city was locked down

Two start-ups incubated at the NASSCOM Centre of Excellence IoT & AI, an initiative of Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) & NASSCOM are supporting ongoing efforts to curb the spread of COVID19. DronaMaps is working with Haryana and Punjab Government, while BlinkIn is providing services to Wuhan Hospital in China.

Dr Ajai Kumar Garg, Senior Director, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), “We are happy to see the excellent job being done by NASSCOM CoE incubated start-ups. They areworking in line with the Government to tackle the pandemic. When these young startups help fight a pandemic by using the latest technologies, we realize that the efforts of NASSCOMCoE towards Digital India are moving in the right direction. I would like to congratulate the team of DronaMaps and BlinkIn for their products that are helping in tracking the cases.”

Sophisticated tracking and communication tools are helping in executing a response, Utkarsh Singh, co-founder of DronaMaps, which is incubated at NASSCOM CoE, Gurugram, said, “At DronaMaps, we hold an expertise in drone-based mapping and AI analytics.

Looking at the capabilities of the solution developed by DronaMaps, Shri Ankur Gupta, IAS, Principal Secretary DITECH, Haryanarecommended them to Health Department, Haryana and connected them with ACS Health& concerned officials. “The infrastructure in Haryana was already very mature, with multiple groups of servers which were handling all GIS requirements of the state.  We immediately published the public dashboards, and is now working toward making the admin dashboards live by Monday (March 30, 2020),” said Utkarsh.

Mr Utkarsh also said that we were in Punjab when the state was designing its policy to tackle the spread of Coronavirus with one positive case already present in Amritsar. We volunteered to contribute to their efforts by providing a reliable dashboard which sourced data released by official sources like the Ministry of Health and Family Affairs to monitor the situation.”

There are two parts to DronaMaps COVID-19 tracking Initiative. First, a user-facing public dashboard that is built to provide reliable information pooled from official sources for citizens at large. The second is an administrative dashboard with more advanced features like location tracking, geofencing, and predictive analytics. “To flatten the curve of the number of cases with the disease, it is important to track the positive cases, suspected cases, quarantined individuals, hospitalised cases etc. To give an example, all suspected cases are constantly monitored through social media or VLR (call records). This ensures officials are aware of the places they could have visited and by detecting the mobile phones close to the patient’s phone, the people who have been in close physical proximity with the patient. In addition, predictive spatial analysis based on granular spatial and temporal data can be used to estimate which areas would need additional resources,” Utkarsh added.

Appreciating the efforts of these startups, Mr. Ajay Tomer, IAS, Addl. Secretary, DITECH, said, “Everyone has to come together to fight the Corona scare and technology is playing a major role in this.

Further, Mr Ankur Gupta, Principal Secretary, DITECH said that the Startups are an important part of the economy as most of them work on the technology that is going to have an immediate impact on human life. We are happy that our startups incubated in Haryana innovation program are playing an active role and is contributing in these times of need.”

Another NASSCOM CoE, Bangalore incubated startup BlinkIn’s remote technology helped the Huoshenshan Field Hospital in Wuhan fight Coronavirus. Their technology XCare was being used to remotely monitor and manage air handling units in Huoshenshan Hospital – an emergency field hospital constructed to specifically cater to patients. The industrial province of Wuhan was the first major city to report a massive outbreak in cases earlier this year. “The Chinese government decided to construct a temporary field medical unit to help victims, the travel ban and virulence of Coronavirus made it near impossible to install aircon units in the hospital for workers and medical staff. BlinkIn’s intelligent visual-assistance company played a key role by providing its tech support to address the crisis. It helped service engineers of Huber-Ranner to install air ventilation systems in two hospitals in Wuhan, remotely,” informed Harshwardhan Kumar, the co-founder of BlinkIn.

About Nasscom CoE- IoT & AI

The NASSCOM Center of Excellence – IoT & AI is the largest collaborative innovation platform in the emerging technologies of IoT, Analytics, AI/ML, AR/VR and Robotics for Digital Transformation. It is part of the Digital India Initiative to jumpstart and drive the emerging technologies ecosystem in India, by leveraging India’s IT strengths and assist the country to attain a leadership role in the convergent area of hardware and software.

The main objective of the CoE is to help Indian Deep-Tech Startups & Companies leverage cutting edge technologies to build market-ready products. Through the Startups Program, CoE aims to build industry capable talent in an entrepreneurial ecosystem by facilitating Incubation, Funding, Acceleration, Industry Connect and Mentoring.

NASSCOM CoE was set up in July 2016 as part of the Digital India initiative of MeitY, with the objective of aiding innovative start-ups in the emerging technologies. NASSCOM CoE-IoT has centres in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Gandhinagar.

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