Eleven teams have been shorlisted for this year’s iDiya competition, which began here today.
The six-day iDiya bootcamp is a nationwide competition that seeks to promote scalable and sustainable businesses across sectors including agri-business, health, education, energy, environment, women’s empowerment and disability.
Some of the ventures include SankalpTaru, which provides an online platform to engage 'green conscious people and corporates’ to plant trees through social technology.
Another venture, BioEnergy Ventures, aims to leverage the surplus agricultural residue potential of India (estimated at over 210 million tonne per year) to develop briquettes, which serve as fuel for industrial heating applications like boilers replacing fuel wood or coal.
The 11 teams have been shortlisted from the 120, which applied for the competition.
The most interesting venture gets Rs 1.725-crore, collected from Nabard, Upaya Social Ventures, Ckinetics, Villgro and Ennovent.
iDIya, launched in 2009 by the Indian School of Business, is an initiative to promote social entrepreneurship in the country.