Five Indian start-ups win international fellowships at the Next Big Idea Contest

MUMBAI, INDIA: Five Indian tech start-ups have been declared winners of the 3rd edition of the Next Big Idea Contest.

The five winners are Bengaluru based Lightmetrics Technologies Private Limited and Packal; Delhi based Neuron and Swift File Transfer, and Thane based Survelytics. The five companies win a two-week incubation at the Ryerson University – the Digital Media Zone (DMZ). The DMZ is ranked first in Canada and fifth in the world by University Business Incubator Index.

The Next Big Idea Contest is a joint initiative by Zone Startups India, the Government of Ontario’s Investment & Trade Office, the Bombay Stock Exchange Institute and Amazon Web Services. The winners were selected based on three criterion – whether the business pitch has the potential to go global, whether the contestant already has a footprint in North America, and lastly if the pitch sported an intellectual property with potential to go global.

Ajay Ramasubramaniam, Director, Zone Start-ups says, “The contest was conceptualized in 2013, with the objective of identifying promising tech start-ups from India, and showcasing them in Toronto. This year the contest has been launched across 9 cities, with 7 city-based accelerator partners. This 3rd Edition of the Next BIG Idea Contest saw 308 applicants contesting for the top slots. It was a challenge zeroing down on the top five.”

“We have seen tremendous ideas come to life through Zone Startups / India, and we look forward to enabling Indian entrepreneurs to bring their innovations to North America. We strongly believe in global sharing of experiences and are happy to nurture these opportunities by offering strong industry connections, mentorship and support from our world-class incubator,” says Jens Michael Schaal, Counsellor (Commercial - Ontario), Ontario International - New Delhi Trade & Investment Office.