Meet the 11 finalists in Intel India’s tech startups incubator Plugin

Santa Clara, California headquartered chipmaker Intel’s Indian arm has unveiled the names of 11 startups selected for the third edition of Plugin, its year-long startup incubation programme for hardware and systems software businesses.

Selected from over 200 entries from across India, the startups work in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and security, a statement said on Wednesday.

The last demo day, which was of Plugin’s second edition, had another set of 11 startups showcase products and solutions in Bengaluru, in July 2019.

The programme, in partnership with the government of India’s department of science and technology (DST) and the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) at IIT Bombay, will facilitate infrastructure, technical support, prototyping, product development and manufacturing connect from Intel India Maker Lab and SINE-IIT Bombay. 

At the conclusion of the programme, the startups will be able to showcase their solutions to investors and ecosystem players at a demo day, with the top-performing startups also qualifying for post-programme funding support. 

The startups are:

SwitchOn.io: Bengaluru-based SwitchOn.io helps customers analyse real time quality and performance of critical assets, non-intrusively, in the manufacturing industry by developing digital twins, reducing wastage due to “Batch failures.”

Ariano Instruments: Bengaluru-based Ariano’s K2 advanced expressive keyboard unlocks the dreams of both professional and amateur musicians to express and play smooth melodies across multiple musical instruments by sensing multiple dimensions of information within a key. 

Gifto Retail: Bengaluru-based Camcom helps drive efficiencies across the automotive value chain, from manufacturing to service and motor insurance. This is done by removing the subjectivity from the quality control process in defect and damage assessment using a computer vision stack.

Haystack Analytics: Mumbai-based Haystack Analytics makes genomics-based drug susceptibility testing available and affordable for large scale deployment starting with Tuberculosis but can be extended to other infectious diseases, as well as analyze "good" bacteria in the gut that helps build our immunity.

Infilect Technologies: Bengaluru-based Infilect empowers brand managers and decision makers with in-store retail execution data at speed, scale, and accuracy, thereby triggering merchandising actions to significantly reduce out-of-stock and over-stock inefficiencies, and thus, increasing same-store sales by more than 10% while reducing marketing spend by more than 30%.

TenXer Technologies: System designers need to evaluate multiple Integrated Circuit (IC) components. Bengaluru-based TenXer’ s Virtual Lab transforms this decade old process by deploying the IC's on the cloud, saving significant time and cost.

Tranzmeo IT Solutions: Kochi-based Tranzmeo’s T-Connect is an intelligent high-performance system, which is designed to redefine the anomaly and intrusion detection in Oil and Gas pipelines with the help of optical sensing technology and deep learning. Tranzmeo is helping oil & gas companies to save millions of dollars every year by protecting the distribution backbone pipelines from anomalies and intrusions.

Vacus Tech: Bengaluru-based VacusTech is a wireless indoor positioning company with patented technology for automated configurable fencing, precise positioning and accounting of assets and people with an accuracy of 30 cm.

Wobot Intelligence: New Delhi-based Wobot Intelligence enables vision-based process compliance. It has helped organisations in food, biotech, pharma, manufacturing and retail to reduce the cost of monitoring employees, risk of non-compliance, pilferage as also improve productivity by plugging in its deep learning computer vision tools into existing cameras.

QuNu Labs: Bengaluru-based QuNu Labs is a startup that utilizes principles of quantum physics to provide unconditional data security. Multiple hacks and data thefts reflect that the best security methods are failing today. Adversaries could be copying and storing your sensitive encrypted data today to decrypt it using state-of-art computing methods. QNu Labs’s quantum security products would protect sensitive data now and in the post-quantum world.

VDT Pipeline Integrity Solutions: Noida-based VDT’s solution helps prevent catastrophic disaster, increases the safety of the oil and gas distribution systems, by inspecting pipelines, internally, for various failures, thereby saving both costs and lives.