SINE Magazine | Jan-Mar 2016 issue
1|Page
CONTENTS
Message from our Professor-in-charge
3
In the News…
5
A look at SINE’s major achievements in the recent past
BIG Scheme Awardees at SINE
SINE Governing Board
CHAIRMAN
Prof. Devang Khakhar,
6
We have provided pre-incubation to four ideas funded by the
Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) of the
Department of Biotechnology under the Biotech Ignition Grant (BIG)
Scheme. Take a look at what they are doing…
Director, IIT Bombay
MEMBERS
Mr. Ashank Desai
Mr. Deepak Satwalekar
Prof. Milind D Atrey
Mr. Pravin Gandhi
Mr. Abhay Havaldar
Mr. Nabankar Gupta
Mr. Pramod Chaudhari
Mr. Samir Kumar
Prof. P M Mujumdar
Prof. Sivakumar G
Prof. Abhay Karandikar
Prof. Chandra Venkataraman
Stand-up Startups
8
A look at some recent achievements of SINE’s incubatees
Down Memory Lane…
10
A collection of memorable moments of SINE and our incubatees:
Fairs, events, and occasions
Saying Goodbye…
16
Acknowledging the contribution of Dr Pradeep Babu Sadasivan
Pillai, Former Business Development Manager, SINE.
…And Welcome
17
To SINE’s latest core team members Yash and Rakesh
SINE Management Team
Prof Milind D Atrey
Professor in Charge
Ms Poyni Bhatt
Chief Operating Officer
Ms CV Krishnaveni
Manager
Yashvardhan Banthia
Business Associate
Rakesh Rajiv
Welcoming into the fold…
5 to 15
Introducing SINE’s latest companies. Look to the left side of every page
for your favourite startup!
Bidding Adieu…
16 & 17
Saluting the graduated companies and their visions.
Business Executive
2|Page
MESSAGE FROM PROFESSOR-IN-CHARGE
Dear all,
At the very outset, wishing you a very happy and
fruitful 2016! We have so far come to you with
three issues of the SINE Magazine. In this fourth, I
take the pleasure to tell you of its journey till now
and what I envision of its going ahead.
I have had 3+ years of association with SINE; it
has been a great learning for me. SINE is into its
11th year; it is evolving and is making its presence
felt. It began when the ecosystem was hardly felt,
start-up idea was nascent with failure a taboo, and
has come to a state where start-up is becoming a
sought after career option and failure is a feather
in the cap- the experience most valued. SINEwise
or otherwise, tech start-ups of IITB are creating a
buzz, the ecosystem is maturing with the oft cited
Powai Valley (Hill rather).
We have clocked 78 start-ups since inception of
entrepreneurial activities on campus with our share
of failures too, which are 15. There are 26 startups incubated presently and 37 are up and running.
SINE is able to keep the vision on its mission by
converting 22+ technologies from the institute into
business ventures. The efforts are on by the startups to get there and take-off with half of them
getting funded and 40% of them being revenue
positive. While within the incubator companies
were able to raise funding in the range of Rs. 50
lakhs to 5 crores with a valuation range of Rs.4
crore to 20 crores. A few of the graduate
companies have also made their mark with
cumulative revenue growth of INR 450+ crores.
Over 2,000+ jobs have got created and the counter
is ticking.
The institute is forging ahead with the following
entrepreneurial activities where SINE is playing
its role to integrate and leverage with them for
fostering its own incubation programme.
 Support to E-Cell, the vibrant student body on
campus for encouraging entrepreneurship
among students.
 Desai-Sethi Centre for Entrepreneurship, an
academic initiative to conduct minor courses
for the B.Tech students desirous of starting-up.
 Associating with Industry & Corporates
including overseas institutes of repute along
with government support in some cases to help
boost its R&D activities by setting up centres
as BETiC, NCAIR, Healthcare Research
3|Page
Consortium, Tata Centre with help of MIT,
IITB Monash Academy, Centre for Excellence
in Nanoelectronics, Applied Materials Centre
etc.
Going forward, what I envision for SINE to make
its incubation programme more effective, is to
create a much better impact by working on the
following, where some initiation has happened:
 Leverage IITB Alumni Network through
channels like (a) Global Business Forum
(GBF),IITB Alumni and SINE Community for
Entrepreneurship Development (I-ASCEND)
which it has created for easy access of alumni
by the start-ups, where the Alumni can be
mentors, investors, advisors, enablers to create
overseas associates and maybe also consider
setting-up their own ventures at SINE. (b)
Facilitate the legacy project entitled “IITB
Innovate”, which provides prototyping funds
to selected innovative ideas. The initiative has
already seen the Batch of 2002 pooling their
support in funding 7 student ideas to date,
while SINE takes pride to have converted two
of them into start-ups.
 Plan for an Accelerator Programme with a
view to not only fast track the incubation
process for the IITB community with mature
ideas but also to be able to help outsiders
validate their ideas.
 Enhance its network by pro-actively
connecting with industries and professional
services for the start-ups by creating database
of industries, mentors, funders, professionals,
etc., conduct showcasing events, workshops
and interactive sessions. Towards this, SINE
has already put in place the SINE Saturday
event, which is open to all, where on last
Saturday of the month, experts/professionals
are called for a half-a-day interactive session
where experience and know-how are shared
and doubts are addressed.
 Review its approach for sourcing its start-ups
by
revisiting
its
incubation
model,
consideration model and selection criteria, as
well as processes it has already initiated, like:
(a) Increase its people resources with focus on
Business Development for greater interaction
with the institute community. This helped
create a pipeline of 100+ ideas per year of
which 20 have got converted. Pursued 12+
ideas in healthcare/ medical devices sector, 7
ideas got converted and 2 are in the offing.
This also includes incubator support to BIRAC
initiative of government where Biotechnology
Ignition Grants (BIG) are given to ideas in the
healthcare sector.
(b) Focus more on pre-incubation; which effort
saw 20 ideas getting pre-incubated of which, 5
got converted to regular incubation, 2 exited
the incubator at point of conversion and 5
could not achieve the milestones.
More for you in the following pages of this issueon what the incubatees have got to say, SINE's
continuing efforts and its future road map.
- Prof. Milind Atrey, Professor-in-Charge, SINE
4|Page
Welcoming into the fold…
IN THE NEWS…
 The Important Numbers:
o
o
o
o
Total companies incubated since inception: 78
Companies currently incubated (as of 1st Jan 2016): 26
Companies successfully graduated from incubation: 37
Startups in last quarter to receive VC funding: 4 (+2 more in
advanced stages)
 The single highest equity exit of INR 50 lac was achieved this year.
 3 corporates have committed CSR funds to SINE, and 3 are in
advanced stage of discussion.
DoI: 1st Aug 2015 (M-03: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Samrat: CEO
 Greeshma: COO
 Mahesh: CFO
 Binil: CTO
“Our goal is to design and develop
innovative technologies that can
translate into high utility, high
impact products which will
address
unmet
needs
in
healthcare and patient well-being,
specifically in India and other
developing countries.”
CEO of Citius Tech, Mr Rizwan Koita signing the CSR agreement with SINE
Chairman Prof. Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay
 SINE is making major inroads in BioTech and Healthcare:
o We now have 10 health / medical device startups, as opposed
to 1 last year
o A separate Bio-Incubator within SINE is being considered.
 A new facility with space for 50 startup offices along with lab space
has been earmarked within the proposed structure:
Products under development:


Cost-effective intravenous
infusion monitoring system
High magnification, diagnostic
quality mobile phone
microscope.
www.medprimetech.com
 The 2002 IITB Alumni batch have contributed to the IITB Innovate
project. The project supports prototype development of innovative
student ideas. It has so far enabled 7 innovative product ideas to get
funded upto INR 2.5 lac and make their prototypes. 2 of them are
now incubated at SINE.
5|Page
Welcoming into the fold…
BIG SCHEME AWARDEES
SINE is offering pre-incubation support for those students and graduates
applying for the Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) Scheme offered by
BIRAC.
BIRAC is the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council of
the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science &
Technology, Govt. of India.
DoI: 1st Aug, 2015 (M-09: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Shyam Shah
 Surabhi Srivastava
The BIG scheme enables a team to get upto INR 50 lac funding to
develop prototypes for their ideas provided they get incubation support.
For further details, log on to http://www.birac.nic.in.
The teams currently occupying offices within the incubator are:
1. Smart Stretcher (Anupam Bam, Nitin Pawar, Bhushan Rao):
"Innovision seeks to develop
affordable solutions in the
healthcare and education space
through
technology
based
innovation. The first product is a
low cost electronic Braille device
to connect the visually impaired
to the digital world in their native
script. This device would connect
to a computer / smart phone and
open up all existing functions and
applications to the blind at a 10
times lower cost through patent
filed technology developed by the
company."
“Our goal is to cater to the needs of vast populations through
development of low cost, easy to use and smart medical
devices/equipment. Currently, we are working on developing a smart
device for transportation of trauma patients, with financial support from
BIG scheme of DBT.”
- Dr Anupam Bam
MBBS
Lokmanya Tilak Municipal
Medical College, Mumbai
M. Tech.,
Biomedical Engineering
IIT Bombay
2. Artificial Bone Graft Material (Kunal Khanna, Prof Jayesh
Bellare):
“There is a very significant clinical need for the treatment of bone tissue
loss or failure resulting from injury or disease, which is severely limited
by donor scarcity and high risk of immune rejection and disease transfer.
Hence we have developed 3-D porous visco-elastic scaffolds to
regenerate bone at maxillofacial and periodontal bone defects.”
- Kunal Khanna
PhD Scholar,
Chemical Engineering
IIT-Bombay
6|Page
Welcoming into the fold…
3. Arterial Pulse Analyzer (Sushanth Poojary, Pradip Gatkine):
“We are building a low-cost
Arterial Pulse Analyzer which
can be used at Rural
PHCs/Medical Vans/Camps to
monitor some very important
parameters of Arterial Pulse to
diagnose
Cardiovascular
Diseases before the onset of
later stages. This device can be
installed in rural PHCs, sub-district hospitals and medical camps where
it will help doctors diagnose the risk factors.
DoI: 1st Nov, 2015 (M-12: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Sanket Kulkarni
 Praful Lakhe
 Suneet Bendre
 Samrudha Kelkar
"Our goal is to create a set of
localised
help
tools
for
smartphone apps that are just
right for a highly heterogeneous
Indian user base. Our services will
bridge the gap between appmakers and Indians over the age
of 35.”
The device was developed at IIT Bombay by Pradip Gatkine and
Sushanth Poojary and has also won the National Gandhian Innovation
Award 2014.”
- Sushanth Poojary
4. Pre-natal abnormality detection (Rishi Adhikary):
“We intend to develop a point-of-care device applying the concept of
smart materials to reduce the cost of screening for congenital anomalies
making the test universally accessible. It would have a great impact to
improve antenatal care and obstetric outcomes in remote areas with
limited health-care facilities which form an important part of health-care
in India. It would provide an option for nursing mothers and health-care
providers all over the nation to be reassured regarding the health of the
fetus or take necessary actions in case of an anomaly.”
- Dr. Rishi Adhikary
MBBS
Research Scholar in Biomedical Engineering
Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering
IIT Bombay
TUTE-EASY
7|Page
Welcoming into the fold…
STAND-UP STARTUPS
A glimpse of our current incubatees’ achievements over the past year
(Startups are arranged alphabetically):
CareNx Innovations Pvt. Ltd.:
Received “Innovation Scholar in Residence at President House”, (Photo
1) met the Prime Minister during the visit (Photo 2). They were also
finalists at SOCAP 2015 at San Francisco, CA, USA (Photo 3):
DoI: 15th May, 2015 (M-05: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Shantanu Pathak
 Anurag Meena
"CareNx develops technologies for
better healthcare delivery. With its
first product, CareMother, a mobile
application platform for pregnancy
and child care it connects
Gynecologist and mother remotely.
We have served more than 1500
mothers and will provide clinic box
solution with mobile based diagnosis
tools for at home care in near
future.”
1
2
3
kWatt Solutions Pvt. Ltd.:
Received 2 rounds of funding: USD
500,000 and USD 1,000,000 in 2014-15
NISE (National Institute of Solar
Energy) under MNRE (Ministry of New
and Renewable Energy) has given them
authorization to conduct Suryamitra solar
training programmes pan-India.
www.caremother.in
Conducted Basic and Advanced workshops under the S-Sparq vertical
for over 20000 students pan-India.
4.25MW rooftop projects in commissioning under S-Rooftop vertical
8|Page
Welcoming into the fold…
MedPrime Technologies Pvt Ltd:
MedPrime was announced
winner
of
“StartHealth
Competition 2”, organized by
Unitus Seed Fund, with INR 10
lakh award prize.
DoI: 12th Oct, 2015 (CM-2: KReSIT)
They have also received a grant
of INR 5 lakhs from Economic
Times Power of
Ideas,
organized by CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad and Department of Science and
Technology.
InfuCheck, the intravenous infusion monitoring system by MedPrime
Technologies was declared First Runner-Up of LEAP Excellence
Innovation Award 2015, by Excellence Group.
Founding Team:
 Shreyans Maini
 Gaurav Daftary
NanoSniff Technologies Pvt. Ltd.:
"We
envision
creating
interconnected products:
2
A) Locale Times: A social
journalism
platform
for
communities
to
discuss
immediate hyper-local issues in
an open and interactive space and
B) Locale Stack: An end-to-end
tech solution for content creators
where we create a set of tools
that aid in story research, creating
beautiful
content
and
experimenting with interactive
storytelling formats."
Prof Ramgopal Rao (Co-founder and Chairman)
was awarded the JC Bose Fellowship for
2015. The fellowship is meant to recognize active
scientists and engineers for their outstanding
performance and contributions. The fellowships
are scientist-specific and very selective. The
fellowship is awarded by the Science and Engineering Research Board
(SERB), a statutory body established through an Act of Parliament to
support basic research in emerging areas of Science & Engineering.
Sensibol Audio Technologies Pvt. Ltd.:
SensiBol wins the Best Start-up
award (out of 121 startups) under
the Technology Incubation and
Development of Entrepreneurs
(TIDE) scheme. The award was
presented by Shri Ravi Shankar
Prasad, the Honorable minister of
Communication and Information Technology, on the occasion of Good
Governance Day at New Delhi.
www.localetimes.com
9|Page
Welcoming into the fold…
DOWN MEMORY LANE…
1. SINE Saturdays:
We aim to provide the maximum benefit to our startups by exposing
them to experienced professionals, serial entrepreneurs, potential clients
and fundraisers on a monthly basis. The “SINE Saturdays” are typically
organized with ecosystem partners in order to ensure maximum value to
our startups. IvyCamp is our current ecosystem partner. In past we
partnered with MyMuneemji, Dua Associates and our latest event was
with NSRS & Co. Topics covered by experts in last quarter are:
1. Fundraising for your venture, pitching an investor. (Photos 1 & 2)
th
DoI: 30 Apr, 2015 (M-07: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Jai Mrug
 Himani Mrug
"Our goal is to generate a
platform of algorithms that can
be used to weave together
Industry-specific solutions. The
library of algorithms eventually
built shall be used to serve the
purpose of Integrated Business
Planning"
2. Speed-date the investor; elevator pitches. (Photos 3 & 4)
3. HR issues and recruitment
4. Accouting and Tax
1
2
3
4
www.m76analytics.com
10 | P a g e
Welcoming into the fold…
DoI: 1st Aug, 2015 (Virtual)
Founding Team:
 Aslam Khan
 Anis Choudhery
 Sudhir Bania
" Transpact® is a Social Enterprise in
Joint research with Industrial Design
Center
of
IIT
Bombay
to
commercialize the First ever
patented automated therapeutic
product for cerebral palsy children to
stimulate
vestibular
system.
Ultimately allowing these CP children
to TRANScend their barriers and
thus, create a positive imPACT on
their lives."
2. AIT Indo-Swiss Camp: Bangalore Session (1st – 5th Feb 2016):
SINE is co-organising an Academia-Industry Training (AIT) Camp with
swissnex India (body under the Consulate General of Switzerland
catering to startups) for 10 researchers each from India and Switzerland.
The aim of the camp is to help commercialise their research into
products that can help society at large.
The project is sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology
(DST), Govt. of India for the Indian participants and by Venture Labs
and EPFL Lausanne for the Swiss participants.
SINE selected the 10 Indian researchers from premier institutes across the
country. Various sessions were conducted for the 20 candidates in order to help
them develop their business plans over 5 days, including:







Cultural workshop for the two nationalities to understand each other’s way
of thinking and interpreting situations
Pitches for the candidates to improve their presentation skills
Design Thinking workshop
Business Model Canvas
IPR, fundraising, legal and regulatory sessions
Visits to IISc Bangalore, incubators, accelerators
Speed date the experts
A final pitch was conducted on the morning of the 5th to see the progress
of the candidates after all the sessions. Every participant showed a
remarkable improvement in their business plans, presentation skills and
acceptance to new and different views about their research.
The next phase of the Camp shall be conducted in Lausanne and Zurich
in the last week of April.
The participants with the organizers from SINE and swissnex India
11 | P a g e
Welcoming into the fold…
DoI: 1st Dec, 2015 (CM-4: KReSIT)
Founding Team:
 Ankith MS
 Kurien Zacharia
 Krishna Kulkarni
"We are a group of curious
engineers aspiring to make
reading more fun, easy and timesaving. Working on a technology
to summarize and optimize
unstructured text content using
novel NLP & ML techniques, our
pilot project is the Mapicle News
App. It summarizes news from
multiple sources and also
provides pre-requisite info like
brief history, fun facts and expert
analysis."
3. EEPC-IESS (22nd – 24th Nov 2015):
SINE companies showcased their products at India’s largest sourcing
show – India Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS). It was organized by
EEPC (Engineering Expert Promotion Council). Many areas of interest
were covered, such as inter-country collaborations, growth of
manufacturing and R&D sectors, innovative solutions to combat
problems in market and society, expanding businesses and job
opportunities, etc. over the 3 days, in the form of seminars, lectures,
panel discussions and exhibitions.
There were over 400 exhibitors from large corporations to startups, 500
overseas buyers and 10,000 trade buyers at the flagship event. The event
has the participation from European and Asian countries with many
countires also signed MoUs with India. Start ups from SINE showcased
their products and solutions alongside large corporations. SINE and its
start ups also participated in panel discussion. Some companies also got
business inquiries from international clients.
Surabhi (Innovision)
Ravindra Chopade (Imboss Technologies)
Mahesh & Greeshma (MedPrime)
Team kWatt Solutions
12 | P a g e
Welcoming into the fold…
4. Global Business Forum Goa (16th – 18th Oct 2015):
Conducted by the IITB Alumni Association (IITBAA), the Global
Business Forum held in Goa saw massive participation in 8 Special
Interest Groups (SIGs): Education, Energy, Environment, Healthcare,
ICT, Infra, Make in India and SMART Liveable Cities
DoI: 8th Sep, 2015 (M-04: CSRE)
This was the first time an event of this scale was conducted by IITBAA.
Attendees included over 1,500 eminent figures globally from among
IITB alumni, faculty, researchers, policy makers, bureaucrats, investors,
entrepreneurs, chief technical officers, top industrialists, central cabinet
ministers and state chief ministers. A huge IITB student participation
was also observed. The GBF aims at unlocking significant new business
opportunities by bringing together the IIT Bombay community and
governments, businesses, investors and trade organizations.
More details about the event can be found at - http://iitbaa-gbf.com/
Founding Team:
 Swapnil Kulkarni
 Nikhil Kashid
 Nikhil Ninne
"Coinn is a Mumbai based startup
founded by IITB and IITM alumni.
Using unprecedented micro-location
tagging, we have built a search-free
cashless payment platform for offline
transactions. COINN app facilitates
cashless payments whether you're
eating out, ordering food at home or
even when you're taking an
Autorikshaw ride.”
Cabinet Ministers attending the event
SINE Start ups at GBF
We had seven SINE startups that showcased their products in the
exhibitions and in talks in the SIGs. Many investors and alumni showed
interest in the startups’ products.
Some of our incubatees in
exhibition:
Top Left: Innovision
Top Right: Igrenenergi
Bottom: kWatt Solutions
13 | P a g e
Welcoming into the fold…
5. Make in India Week: Exhibitions (13th – 18th Feb 2016):
DoI: 1st June, 2015 (M-13: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Apurva Godbole
 Dinesh Sain
 Prasanna Shevare
“We are a SINE IITB incubated
drone solutions company. Drona
builds solutions for emergency
services, primarily fire accident
rescue operations and life safety
at beaches. The 'Pluto' drone is
an educational platform for
college students to learn drone
building and drone hacking. We
also
provide
aerial
cinematography and mapping
services.”
The initiative Make in India was launched on Saturday, 13th Feb 2016 in
Mumbai. The weekend saw a massive participation from large
corporates, smaller industries, academic institutes and various
departments of the government, in the fields of Automobiles,
Construction and Infra, Defense, Electronics and IT, MSME, Oil and
Petrochemicals, Textiles, etc.
Seminars, symposiums, panel discussions, etc. are being held throughout
the week, while exhibitions from all of the sectors listed above are live
throughout the week, along with some from states in India. Among the
exhibitions is a pavilion showcasing Pan-IIT technologies.
SINE startups were selected by IIT Bombay to showcase their
technology along with the other IITB research projects:
Top Left: NanoSniff
Technologies’ OmniCant and
Sensimer
Top Right: ideaForge
Technologies’ UAV NetraV2
Bottom: Drona Aviation’s
handheld Pluto Drone
www.dronaaviation.com
14 | P a g e
Welcoming into the fold…
6. Other Events hosted by SINE
a. NEAC-IITE Meeting for DST (30th Nov – 1st Dec 2015)
SINE hosted a meeting of the Department of Science and Technology’s
National Expert Advisory Committee on Innovation, Incubation and
Technology Entrepreneurship (NEAC-IITE) for two days. The purpose
of the meeting was for DST to review applications and presentations
from institutes to set up new incubators.
DoI: 15th May, 2015 (M-10: CSRE)
Founding Team:
 Saurabh Bhat
 Pooja Gupta Bhat
A panel of experts was invited alongside the 4 DST members to judge
the presentations. The panel was chaired by Dr SK Joshi, and included
the following personas:




Vision
To be the most popular online
platform for credit, insurance and
equity intermediation,
servicing
small and meduim scale enterprises.
To enable MSME clients get a faster
and easier access to the banking and
finance sector, where borrowers who
need access to credit get registered,
upload information which is analysed
filtered and presented as a proposal
format that is accessed online by
banks and financial institutions.
“Our objective is to fulfill finance
related requirements of MSME
clients through a faster, more
transparent and easy process and
thus provide fuel for the growth of
this sector, which accounts for
almost 40% of the countrys exports,
and employs over 60% of the labour
force.”



Mr Ananta Sarma, CEO, SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd, Mumbai
Dr CR Bhatia, Ex. Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Navi
Mumbai
Dr Dinesh Awasthi, Director, Entrepreneurship Development
Institute of India, Gandhinagar, Gujarat
Mr Manav Subodh, Head, Corporate Affairs, South and West India,
Intel, Bengaluru
Mr Nalin Kohli, President, Association of Small & Medium
Knowledge Industries, New Delhi
Mr Saurabh Srivastava, Chairman Emeritus, TiE Delhi
Mr Suhas Gopinath, Chairman and CEO, Globals Inc., Bangalore
b. Event with Banks (28th Jan, 2016)
SINE held a meeting with banks to discuss modes of collaboration
between the financial entities and the incubator. The banks attending
were Canara Bank, Citi Bank, Dena Bank, Deutsche Bank, HDFC Bank,
IDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, State Bank of India and Yes Bank,
most of whom presented their offerings for startups. 8 incubatees from
SINE also presented their offerings to banks and/or large corporates.
The topics of discussion between SINE, the banks and the incubatees
included establishment of branches catering to startups, increased
financial benefits and lines of credit to startups, consideration of taking
IP as collateral against loans, innovative methods to fund new-age
startups as they do not fall under traditional MSME specifications,
helping startups with expensive products judge credit-worthiness of
customers, thereby establishing EMI schemes, etc.
The event ended on a positive note, with many banks scheduling one-onone meetings with the incubatees to take up the interaction forward.
15 | P a g e
Bidding Adieu…
SAYING GOODBYE…
Exit Date: 31st Mar, 2015
Founding Team:



Faisal
Mandar
Abhishek
“Omnikart.com is a b2b e-commerce
platform and one stop solution for all
industrial needs. It was started by
bunch of IIT Bombay alumni’s who
aims to solve the procurement
problem existing in the Indian
industrial market. After a successful
incubation in SINE IIT Bombay,
Omnikart raised seed round of
funding from WIllfly Ventures.
Presently it operates in 30+ product
categories,
spanning
100,000
products with well-reputed brands
from 1100+ trusted vendors.”
Dr Pradeep Babu Sadasivan Pillai
Former Business Development Manager, SINE
Pradeep has worked as SINE’s Business Development Manager for 2
years. He’s worked round the clock to ensure that SINE always has a
continuous pipeline of applications. Some of his major achievements at
SINE:



Facilitated over 100+ applications to SINE’s incubation per year.
Worked with idea-stage to prototype-stage plans to ensure 20 new
startups into SINE.
Laid the groundwork for (and still assists with) the setup of a BioIncubator within SINE. His consistent efforts and engagement took
the healthcare and medical device companies’ pipeline from 0 to 12.
Identified promising research from within IITB and helped teams
apply for competitive national-level grants. His efforts in that area
have helped teams access over INR 20mn for proof-of-concept
generations towards eventual start-ups.
Pradeep is currently working as a senior advisor to the UK Science and
Innovation Network under the British High Commission, but still helps
SINE out whenever required.
Cover Photo Credits: “Taking Flight” captured by Pradeep, symbolizing
SINE’s intent to soar to new heights and the beginning of the journey
16 | P a g e
Bidding Adieu…
…AND WELCOME
New SINE team members
Rakesh Rajiv: Business Executive
Rakesh has a background in Research
Commercialization, having completed
his Post Graduate Diploma in
Bioscience Enterprise from The
University of Auckland and B.Tech. in
Biotechnology from Vellore Institute
of Technology.
Exit Date: 31st Mar, 2015
Founder:

Toshendra Sharma
About
Wegilant builds automated tools
and offers solutions which address
the core problem of mobile
application security. Appvigil, the
flagship product of Wegilant, is a
SaaS based Mobile Reputation
Protection Suite which enables
enterprises
to
find
security
vulnerabilities in mobile apps and fix
them, accurate and fast.
Vision
To secure mobile app ecosystem
during development, distribution &
deployment
phases
through
automation.
Mission
To
automate
app
security
assessment, monitoring & defenses
accurately through innovation.
Prior to joining SINE, Rakesh worked
as a Business Analyst at the technology transfer offices at Otago
University and Auckland University where he was involved in
supporting the commercialization team in market research, patent
landscaping, drafting business plans, screening new technologies etc. In
India he has worked as a researcher at National Centre for Biological
Sciences (NCBS) and as a Systems Engineer at Tata Consultancy
Services Limited (TCS).
Rakesh works in the Business team and manages deal flow within the
incubator. He is also building up the Bio-Incubator proposal for SINE.
Yashvardhan Banthia: Business Associate
Yash is an alumnus of IIT Bombay,
having graduated with a B.Tech in
Metallurgical Engineering and Materials
Science.
He has worked as a Business Associate
with Appco Marketing (India) Pvt Ltd
for a year, organising various face-toface
marketing
campaigns
for
professional resource mobilisation for
not-for-profit clients.
At SINE, Yash manages events and outreach programs. He is also
building the structure of an upcoming Accelerator Programme, and a
new mentor database for SINE.
17 | P a g e
18 | P a g e