Global industry experts, researchers, academia, start-ups and enterprises from across the globe are set to come together to identify challenges, opportunities and develop market-ready tech-based solutions in ESG practices at the second edition of the Enterprise Innovation Challenge (EIC) platform organised by NASSCOM Centre of Excellence (CoE) for IoT & AI in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The flagship challenge being organised from 28th January to March 2022 will provide an opportunity for ESG start-ups and scaleups to solve gripping issues for enterprises by fostering state-of-the-art innovations and technologies in ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) practices.
The recent decade has seen a paradigm shift in business values with corporates leveraging ESG measures to compute the ethical and sustainable impact of an investment as well as determine issues like carbon emissions, climate change, energy consumption etc. The pandemic has further heightened the social and economic vulnerability compelling businesses to ponder on the need to strengthen their environmental, social and corporate governance performances. With enterprises, start-ups, MSMEs and the consumers showing keen interest in making the transition towards absolute economic and societal sustainability, the three ‘P’s-People, Profit, and Planet are becoming increasingly important.
According to Mr. Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO, Centre of Excellence, NASSCOM, “This season of Enterprise Innovation Challenge (EIC) will aim at mapping the progress while looking at innovative strategies to create viable and localised use cases to overcome the unanticipated risks of Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance (ESG). This challenge will further help in the discovery of promising start-ups that leverage cutting-edge technologies to develop impactful real-life solutions for the problem statements identified by leading enterprises. We also aspire to help the industry set up flexible, ethical, and innovative standards for the future.”
Initiated in 2021, EIC aims to leverage the innovations created by Indian entrepreneurs and nurture sustained engagements between innovative start-ups and enterprises. The use cases will undergo rigorous brainstorming and evaluation until the most commendable and cost-effective innovative solution is shortlisted. Interested entities will avail these solutions for augmenting, improving, and scaling up the ESG challenges defined by the enterprises.
About NASSCOM CoE for IoT & AI
The Centre of Excellence for IoT & AI was announced by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2015 as a part of Digital India Initiative to jump start the IOT & AI ecosystem taking advantage of India’s IT strengths and help the country attain a leadership role in the convergent area of hardware and software. The Center of Excellence is the largest deep tech innovation ecosystem in India comprising of start-ups, innovators, enterprises and the government. The platform focusses on solving real-world challenges utilising technologies like IoT, AI, Data Science, Big Data, AR/VR, Machine Learning, robotics and through extensive academic research. The main objective of the Centre is to create innovative applications and domain capability by harnessing the innovative nature of start-up community and leveraging the experience of corporate players.
